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TICKET Act passes Senate committee, but campaigners criticise removal of provision on speculative selling
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 28 July 2023
A number of consumer rights groups in the US have criticised an amendment to the TICKET Act – which was approved in Congress this week – and which removes a proposed transparency obligation around the speculative selling of tickets on resale sites.
The TICKET Act is one of several proposals in Congress at the moment that seeks to better regulate the American ticketing business. It was proposed earlier this year by Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, both members of the Senate’s Commerce Committee, which discussed and approved the proposals, in their amended form, yesterday.
Issues around ticketing became a big talking point in US political circles again last year after the Ticketmaster system collapsed when tickets for Taylor Swift’s tour went on sale.
There are an assortment of different issues, of course, some mainly related to primary ticketing, some to secondary ticketing, and some to both. And then there are the issues that have been raised about the market dominance of Ticketmaster as part of the wider Live Nation business.
Multiple campaigns are now underway and legislative proposals on the table seeking to change the way ticketing is regulated, and a load of lobbying is going on behind the scenes. Live Nation is generally keen for secondary ticketing to be the focus, even though Ticketmaster is still involved in ticket resale in the US.
Meanwhile, groups that support touting – or scalping, to use the US term – are obviously keen to put the focus on primary ticketing and Live Nation. Some also hope that the outcome of all this might be new rules that actually protect the right of people to resell tickets, rather than laws that regulate the resale process.
So, lots of different agendas are currently being pursued. Although most people support all-in-pricing, ie the approach where the full cost of a ticket, including any commissions and fees, is declared up front wherever a ticket is advertised. Rather than the face value of the ticket being publicised and the extra commissions and fees only being declared at the end of the ticket buying process.
Most ticketing companies recognise that commissions and fees being added at the final stage annoys consumers and that’s not a good thing. Though, many have also argued that if one company voluntarily moves to all-in-pricing it is then disadvantaged, because at first glance it will look like its tickets are more expensive. Hence the support for a rule that forces the all-in-pricing approach across the board.
In the UK, all-in-pricing is now pretty much standard in ticketing, in no small part because the country’s advertising industry regulator – the Advertising Standards Authority – has a rule that states: “All quoted prices must include non-optional taxes, duties, fees and charges that apply to all or most buyers – if a booking fee is not optional, ticket prices must be stated inclusive of any booking fee”.
Actually, some US ticketing companies have now committed to voluntarily shift to all-in-pricing in response to President Joe Biden’s campaign against what he calls ‘junk fees’. However, Cruz and Cantwell’s TICKET Act will create a new law forcing the full price of a ticket to be declared up front.
Welcoming the approval of his proposals by the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday, Cruz said: “With the TICKET Act, the days of the exasperated sports fan or concertgoer being unable to accurately comparison-shop for a ticket to the big game or the perfect show are over”.
“Hidden and extra fees for live events are confusing and deeply frustrating for consumers who simply want to find the best-priced ticket whether it’s sold by the venue, a reseller or a scalper”, he went on. “I am proud to have worked with Chairwoman Cantwell in authoring the TICKET Act and hope the Senate takes up our legislation quickly”.
However, the original version of the TICKET Act also included another transparency obligation in relation to so called speculative selling of tickets on the secondary market. That is where touts advertise a ticket for sale that they don’t actually have yet.
Speculative selling is not allowed in some countries like the UK, and some campaigners in the US – including the Fix The Tix campaign – would like a similar ban Stateside. The original TICKET Act didn’t do that, but it did say that touts should have to state if they are promoting for sale a ticket they are yet to actually secure.
That element has been removed from the act. Criticising that move, groups like the National Consumers League, Consumer Action and Consumer Federation Of America said in a joint statement: “The eliminated provision would have addressed a controversial practice known as ‘speculative ticketing’, that has harmed too many consumers who thought they had purchased a ticket only to later find out that the seller was unable to fulfill their order”.
“We are extremely disappointed”, they added, “that the Commerce Committee today bowed to pressure from industry opponents and missed an opportunity to reduce the risk that fans end up high and dry without tickets to events they had otherwise planned to attend”.
Cantwell did acknowledge that concerns remain, including in Congress, about the speculative selling of tickets, when commenting on the latest version of the TICKET Act.
She stated: “I know our colleague Senator [Amy] Klobuchar has been a leader [on this] and I want to work with her and others to ensure that in the future venues who have to fight against the scourge of people trying to pretend that they’re selling tickets to their venue that we actually stop that practice in the future”.
