A bill that requires “all-in” ticket pricing and bans speculative ticketing is headed for a full vote in both chambers of the US Congress.
The Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act, which has been bouncing around the halls of Congress for a few years now, passed through the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday (April 8) with broad bipartisan support.
The Senate version of the bill passed through committee in February, setting up the TICKET Act for a full vote in both the Senate and House. The bill passed a full vote in the House last year, but was cut from a Senate spending bill shortly before the session ended, in effect killing the proposed law.
The bill mandates that ticket sellers disclose the final cost of a ticket, including all fees, up front. It also bans the practice of speculative pricing – ticket resellers who sell tickets to consumers before they have themselves acquired those tickets.
In its place, the bill establishes a legal category for “ticket procurement services” – platforms that can charge consumers in advance to purchase tickets on their behalf, so long as the platform makes clear that they don’t yet own the tickets in question.
“This helps fans avoid the chaos of public on-sales and the special access that often comes with them,” said the Ticket Buyers Bill of Rights coalition, an umbrella group of consumers groups that has backed the TICKET Act.
The bill also cracks down on misleading websites, for instance those that claim to be “official” ticket resellers when they aren’t. And it requires the Federal Trade Commission to review the BOTS Act, a law that was meant to combat the growing practice of automated algorithms (bots) buying up large swaths of tickets out from under consumers at the moment of on-sale. The 2016 law appears to have had little impact on the use of bots.
Ticketmaster owner Live Nation, which has voluntarily switched to an “all-in” pricing model, has thrown its support behind the TICKET Act.
“We’re grateful to Reps. Gus Bilirakis, Jan Schakowsky, Chairman Brett Guthrie and Ranking Member [Frank] Pallone for re-introducing the TICKET Act, which includes an all-in pricing mandate and bans speculative ticketing – a deceptive scheme that targets concert-going fans,” the company said in a statement.
“Live Nation has long advocated for such reforms, and we’re hopeful Congress could soon pass these important changes into law to make the concert industry better for fans and artists.”
The bill’s passage out of House committee comes little more than a week after President Donald Trump – with Kid Rock (Robert Ritchie) at his side – signed an executive order aimed at clamping down on ticket scalping and hidden fees in the live entertainment industry.
The order directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Federal Trade Commission to ensure the proper enforcement of competition laws in the concert and entertainment industry. It also instructed Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to enforce IRS compliance among ticket resellers.
“We’re hopeful Congress could soon pass these important changes into law to make the concert industry better for fans and artists.”
Live Nation
Trump said it “bothers” Kid Rock that music fans often find themselves having to pay exorbitant prices to scalpers to attend concerts.
“It bothers a lot of other artists too,” the president said. Artists “go out with a $100 ticket and it sells for $2,000 the following night.”
The president also criticized how ticket resellers “seem to be able to sweep up the best locations too, which is pretty amazing.”
Kid Rock highlighted the apparent lack of enforcement of the BOTS Act, saying that authorities have “only enforced that BOTS Act one time, I believe.”
The latest iteration of the TICKET Act “directly responds to the President’s Executive Order,” the Ticket Buyer Bill of Rights group said in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce committee.
“It represents an important step toward ensuring that consumers have clear and accurate information about their tickets while being protected from deceptive practices… By empowering consumers, and fostering greater trust and accountability within the ticketing industry, this legislation benefits all fans.”Music Business Worldwide
