This New Junk Fees Legislation Is Gonna Make Booking Concerts This Summer SO Much Easier
The government is finally looking out for us music-lovers with a new piece of legislation guaranteed to have you swaying with the music in no time. On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that ticketing monoliths Live Nation and Ticketmaster have (finally) pledged to give U.S. consumers the ability to see the full price of tickets up front – so no more last minute stadium or janitorial or soft pretzel or whatever random fees they come up with ratcheting up the final cost.
Image via Haley Sprankle / B+C
The announcement comes amid Taylor Swift’s and Beyoncé’s 2023 tours, which saw insane ticket price gouging during their initial release, specifically with resellers buying tickets in bulk and the ticketing platforms charging additional fees not controlled by the artists. There were (quite literally) people upselling their $1,600 seats for over $40,000 – so if that’s not concerning I don't know what is.
This issue became a huge point of contempt within Congress, with Biden specifically pushing for legislation to limit hidden costs paid by consumers throughout the economy. The successful passing of this piece comes during Biden’s latest effort to address kitchen-table issues as economic concerns remain top of mind for voters heading into the 2024 election.
“The solution is what is called ‘all-in pricing’ and that’s where companies fully disclose their fees up front, when you start shopping, so you’re not surprised at the end when you check out,” Biden said at a White House event.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation aren’t the only companies making the pledge, though. Similar middlemen like SeatGeek, Airbnb, TickPick, DICE, and more agreed to the new terms.
Now you may be wondering: “When will this even take effect?” Live Nation users will see changes as soon as September, following the company’s decision to ensure all tickets sold for its shows through Ticketmaster will automatically “list all the prices up front, for all tickets to events at more than 200 venues of its own, benefiting over 30 million customers and will give customers the options for an all-in price for all other tickets sold on its platform,” according to Biden.
In February, Biden proposed the Junk Fee Protection Act to target four types of excessive fees, including: excessive entertainment ticket fees, airline fees for families sitting together on flights, exorbitant early termination fees for TV, phone and internet services, as well as surprise resort and destination fees.
While we look forward to this new transparency – especially in this economy – it’s a small step towards preventing price gouging. Hopefully, we can see the government address real concerns within the entertainment industry, and more broadly within the nation moving forward, but we’ll take this win for now!
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Header image courtesy of Hanny Naibaho / Unsplash.
