Two New Senate Bills Aim to Clean Up Ticketing Industry

Two new bills introduced to the Senate Wednesday aim to clean up the ticketing industry and address long-standing criticisms about Ticketmaster’s dominance over the primary ticketing market.

The TICKET ACT, introduced by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — chair and ranking member of Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, respectively — would ban hidden ticket fees, requiring vendors to display the total price of a ticket up front. These fees can sometimes increase the purchase price by as much as 60% or higher. For example, some tickets in the upper seating section for Luke Combs‘ current stadium tour being sold by Ticketmaster are marked up more than 100% when fees and taxes are added to the face value.

The bill would also attempt to reign in speculative ticket sales, a heavily criticized sales technique used by ticket scalpers to maximize profits. Speculative ticket selling is the practice of selling a ticket one does not own, often at the height of the market, and then waiting until the price drops to procure and deliver the ticket to the consumer. The TICKET ACT would require scalpers to display in a “clear and conspicuous manner” that the ticket seller does not actually possess the ticket at the time the ticket is listed for sale.

Recent ticketing legislation proposals by both Live Nation and the National Independent Talent Organization have called for a ban of speculative ticketing – with several prominent music industry executives comparing the practice to fraud.

The other bill, the Unlocking Ticketing Markets Act, was presented by longtime Ticketmaster critics Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), seeking to limit the use and scope of exclusive multi-year ticketing contracts in live entertainment. The legislation is aimed at Ticketmaster, which “by some estimates has locked up 70 to 80 percent market share and has used its dominance to pressure venues to agree to ticketing contracts that last up to ten years, insulating it from competition,” explains a press release from Klobuchar’s office announcing the legislation.

It follows a January Senate Judiciary Committee hearing probing the cause of the Ticketmaster Taylor Swift crash. During the hearing, Ticketmaster was regular criticized by the committee for the company’s dominate market share of the U.S. ticketing industry, with several senators accusing the company of acting like a monopoly.

The Unlocking Ticketing Markets Act would empower “the Federal Trade Commission to prevent the use of excessively long multi-year exclusive contracts that lock out competitors, decrease incentives to innovate new services, and increase costs for fans.”

The text of the Unlocking Ticketing Markets Acts has not yet been released to the public and it’s unclear how the bill would define excessively long contracts. In a press release announcing the legislation, Klobuchar’s office noted that some exclusive ticketing contracts last as long as ten years, but the average contract term in sports and live entertainment is typically five to seven years, according to multiple sources, including the often-cited Ticketmaster vs. Tickets.com lawsuit from 2003.