US senators tackle touts with Fans First Act
Live Nation and others have given their backing to new regulations introduced by a bipartisan group of US senators in a bid to reform the live event ticketing system.
The Fans First Act – proposed by Republican senators John Cornyn, Marsha Blackburn and Roger Wicker, and Democrats Amy Klobuchar, Ben Ray Luján and Peter Welch – is designed to help increase transparency in ticket sales, protect customers “from fake or dramatically overpriced tickets”, and hold “bad actors who engage in illegal ticket sale practices” to account.
Included in the measures is a requirement for all ticket sellers to disclose the total cost of the ticket upfront, including fees, along with a breakdown of the ticket cost, clear terms and conditions, details of the seat or section they are selling in, and whether or not they are the original seller.
The legislation is also seeking to strengthen the ban on the use of bots to buy tickets, as well as requiring sellers to provide proof of purchase to consumers within 24 hours of purchase, and refund the full cost of the ticket when events are cancelled. In addition, it would ban speculative ticketing, prevent the use of deceptive websites and bad actors masquerading as legitimate sellers and impose civil penalties on resellers engaging in illegal ticket sale practices.
“The current ticketing system is riddled with problems and doesn’t serve the needs of fans, teams, artists, or venues,” says Sen Cornyn. “This legislation would rebuild trust in the ticketing system by cracking down on bots and others who take advantage of consumers through price gouging and other predatory practices and increase price transparency for ticket purchasers.”
“Buying a ticket to see your favourite artist or team is out of reach for too many Americans,” adds Sen Klobuchar. “Bots, hidden fees, and predatory practices are hurting consumers whether they want to catch a home game, an up-and-coming artist or a major headliner like Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny. From ensuring fans get refunds for cancelled shows to banning speculative ticket sales, this bipartisan legislation will improve the ticketing experience.”
“We welcome legislation that brings positive reform to live event ticketing and protects fans and artists from predatory resale practices”
Live Nation has backed the move in a post shared by president and CEO Michael Rapino on social media.
“We welcome legislation that brings positive reform to live event ticketing and protects fans and artists from predatory resale practices,” says the LN statement, “We’ve long supported a federal all-in pricing mandate, banning speculative ticketing and deceptive websites, as well as other measures, and we look forward to our continued work with policymakers to advocate for even stronger reforms and enforcement.”
The legislation has also been endorsed by the Fix the Tix Coalition, National Independent Venue Association, Recording Academy, Recording Industry Association of America, Eventbrite, North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents, International Association of Venue Managers, Future of Music Coalition, Music Managers Forum and the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), among others.
“Fans, artists, and our entire industry recognise that the current ticket-buying disarray driven by predatory secondary sellers is an emergency,” adds Fix the Tix. “Passage of comprehensive ticketing reforms is the only solution that will put money back into the pockets of consumers and bridge the divide that ticket resellers have created between fans and artists.”
The Fans First Act is the latest ticketing legislation to be put forward in the US in the wake of 2022’s string of controversies, the most high-profile of which involved the onsales for tours by Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen.
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Live Nation issued with subpoena by US Senate
Live Nation has been issued with a subpoena by a US Senate panel for documents regarding its ticket pricing and fees.
In a letter to LN chief Michael Rapino, Senator Richard Blumenthal says the subpoena is in connection with its previously unannounced investigation into the business practices of Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary.
Blumenthal says the PSI [Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations] first wrote to the company back in March, seeking “documents and information” relating to the probe.
“Despite nearly eight months and extensive efforts to obtain voluntary compliance, Live Nation/Ticketmaster has failed to fully comply with PSI’s requests, including refusing to produce certain documents critical to the subcommittee’s inquiry,” continues Blumenthal.
“Furthermore, the subcommittee has identified additional categories of documents necessary to complete its inquiry. As a result, the enclosed subpoena also seeks records related to Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s failure to combat artificially inflated demand fuelled by bots in multiple, high-profile incidents, which resulted in consumers being charged exorbitant ticket prices.”
“Live Nation has egregiously stonewalled my subcommittee’s inquiry into its abusive consumer practices – making the subpoena necessary”
Posting on X, Blumenthal, who tabled the “Junk Fee Prevention Act earlier this year, adds: “Live Nation has egregiously stonewalled my subcommittee’s inquiry into its abusive consumer practices – making the subpoena necessary. This subpoena demands that the company promptly comply with our request for documents essential to understand its business practices.”
The Connecticut Senator’s letter calls on LN to submit all requested documents by 18 December.
In a statement, Live Nation says it has “voluntarily worked with the subcommittee from the start, providing extensive information and holding several meetings with staff”.
A Live Nation spokesperson adds: “In order to provide additional information requested about artist and client compensation and other similarly sensitive matters, we’ve asked for standard confidentiality measures. Thus far, the subcommittee has refused to provide such assurances, but if and when those protections are in place we will provide additional information on these issues.”
Live Nation CFO Joe Berchtold offered investors an update on the DoJ’s investigation of the company during this month’s Q3 earnings call. Berchtold also defended Ticketmaster’s practices in a US Senate antitrust panel spurred by the fallout from the presale for Taylor Swift’s stadium tour at the start of 2023.
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US senators introduce Junk Fee Prevention Act
US Senators have introduced new legislation which would eliminate “excessive” ticketing fees for concerts and other events.
Senators Richard Blumenthal and Sheldon Whitehouse have announced the “Junk Fee Prevention Act” following calls from president Joe Biden during his State of the Union address.
Biden argued that hidden or unexpected fees “are not only costly to consumers, but they can stifle competition by encouraging companies to use increasingly sophisticated tools to disguise the true price consumers face”.
If passed, the new legislation would eliminate “excessive, hidden, and unnecessary fees” imposed on consumers and “ensure transparency” in industries such as ticketing by requiring the full prices of services to be provided upfront.
“Concealed surprise fees – nickel and diming Americans to distraction – must be stopped,” says Blumenthal. “Airline travel, concert going, common purchases – seemingly almost everywhere – consumers are compelled to pay hidden excessive charges.
“Our bill will help end this price gouging – forcing full disclosure upfront and restricting abusive fees. It will mandate basic common sense fairness and transparency, which consumers rightly demand and deserve.”
“Our Junk Fee Prevention Act would provide consumers with the transparency they deserve when making a purchase”
“Consumers are charged hidden fees when purchasing everything from flights to concert tickets,” adds Whitehouse. “Our Junk Fee Prevention Act would provide consumers with the transparency they deserve when making a purchase.”
Live Nation has backed president Biden’s call for transparency around ticketing fees last year. The company went on to launch the Fair Ticketing Act last month and has received support from the likes of CAA, UTA, Wasserman Music and WME in its calls for ticketing reforms. Among its recommendations are for all-in pricing across all ticketing marketplaces introduced nationally so that fans know the full cost of a ticket plus fees right upfront.
Ticketing fees have been thrust under the microscope of late after The Cure persuaded Ticketmaster to offer partial refunds for “unduly high” ticketing fees charged in the Verified Fan sale for the band’s upcoming North American tour.
The firm had come in for criticism during this week’s sale when ticket-holders posted screenshots online showing some fees exceeding the cost of the tickets themselves.
Neil Young has also weighed in on the dispute, posting under the headline “concert touring is broken” on his website.
“It’s over, the old days are gone,” he writes. “I get letters blaming me for $30,000 tickets for a benefit I am doing. That money does not go to me or the benefit. Artists have to worry about ripped off fans blaming them for Ticketmaster add-ons and scalpers.
“Concert tours are no longer fun. Concert tours [are] not what they were.”
“Ticketmaster unilaterally decides which tickets it advertises and sells as ‘Official Platinum’ based on a given event”
Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit has been launched against Ticketmaster in Canada, alleging the company “intentionally misleads consumers for their own financial gain”.
The case – filed by Montreal-based law firm LPC Avocat Inc – says a customer bought two market-driven “platinum” tickets for Drake’s upcoming 14 July show at the Bell Centre for C$789.54 (€533.70) each. However, it says that when Drake added a second show for the following night, the same seats could be purchased for more than $350 less.
As per the Toronto Star, the suit also claims that Ticketmaster knew Drake would be performing two shows at the venue, but “concealed this information” to “squeeze out” as much money as possible from fans buying tickets for the first date.
“Ticketmaster unilaterally decides which tickets it advertises and sells as ‘Official Platinum’ based on a given event,” reads the filing. “The result is that most, if not all, of the tickets advertised and sold as ‘Official Platinum’ are neither ‘premium tickets’ nor ‘some of the best seats in the house’ and are, in fact, just regular tickets sold by Ticketmaster at an artificially inflated premium in bad faith.”
Ticketmaster has not commented on the allegations.
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Ticketmaster grilled by senators over Swift onsale
Live Nation’s Joe Berchtold has defended Ticketmaster’s practices in a US Senate antitrust panel spurred by the fallout from the presale for Taylor Swift’s stadium tour.
Swift shifted more than two million tickets – a new record for an artist in a single day – for her AEG-promoted 52-date The Eras Tour, but the sale was marred by reports of “significant service failures” and lengthy delays on Ticketmaster’s website, leading to today’s (24 January) near three-hour bipartisan panel investigating a “lack of competition in ticketing markets”.
In his opening statement, Berchtold, Live Nation’s president and CFO, said the firm had invested more than $1 billion to improve the Ticketmaster system since the companies’ 2010 merger.
“Much of this was on technologies to eliminate fraud and to get tickets to fans instead of ticket scalpers using bots, a prime example of which is our Verified Fan service,” he said.
“We hear people say that ticketing markets are less competitive today than they were at the time of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger [but] that’s simply not true… The Ticketmaster of 2010 did not face the level of competition that we face today… Ticketmaster has lost, not gained, market share since the merger.”
“There are problems in the ticketing industry. The recent onsale experience with Taylor Swift… has highlighted the need to address these issues urgently”
Berchtold moved on to address the Swift ticketing controversy from last November. The Eras Tour attracted “historically unprecedented demand” as 3.5m people pre-registered for Swift’s Verified Fan presale, 1.5m of whom were later invited to participate in the onsale. However, the Ticketmaster site struggled to cope with the traffic after being swamped by bot attacks. Seatgeek (which took on $238m in private equity investment in August) experienced similar technical issues ticketing five of the Swift dates.
“There are problems in the ticketing industry, problems we believe can and should be addressed through legislation,” he said. “Many are the direct result of industrial scale ticket scalping that goes on today – a $5bn industry and concerts alone in the United States, fuelled by practices that run counter to the interests of artists and their fans.”
He continued: “The recent onsale experience with Taylor Swift… has highlighted the need to address these issues urgently. We knew bots would attack that onsale and planned accordingly. We were then hit with three times the amount of bot traffic that we’d ever experienced. And for the first time in 400 Verified Fan onsales, they came after our Verified Fan password servers as well.
“While the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets, the attack requires to slow down and even pause our sales. This is what led to a terrible consumer experience, which we deeply regret. We apologise to the fans. We apologise to Miss Swift. We need to do better, and we will do better. Ticketmaster learned valuable lessons from this onsale.
“In hindsight, there are several things we could have done better. And let me be clear that Ticketmaster accepts its responsibility as being the first line of defence against bots in our industry. It’s an ever-escalating arms race. But in this forum where we’re here to discuss public policy, we also need to recognise how industrial scalpers using bots and cyber attacks to unfairly gain tickets has contributed to this awful experience.”
“We should mandate all-in pricing so that fans see the full cost of their tickets from the start”
Berchtold called for “categorical prohibitions” on “fraudulent ticket practices, including deceptive URLs”, along with spec-selling. “We should mandate all-in pricing so that fans see the full cost of their tickets from the start,” he added. “We share your goal of making live entertainment industry better for artist teams and fans alike.”
The panel also heard from witnesses including SeatGeek co-founder Jack Groetzinger, JAM Productions president Jerry Mickelson, singer/songwriter Clyde Lawrence, Sal Nuzzo, SVP of the The James Madison Institute, and Kathleen Bradish, the American Antitrust Institute’s VP for legal advocacy.
Asked directly whether they considered Ticketmaster to be a monopoly, Groetzinger, Mickelson and Nuzzo answered “yes”, and Bradish said the company was “certainly acting like a monopoly”, while Lawrence said, “I’m not sure.”
In response, Berchtold argued the ticketing business “has never been more competitive”. “We believe that fact is demonstrated by every venue renewal [having] multiple credible offers in a bidding process,” he noted.
The session was announced by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee of the senate judiciary subcommittee on competition policy, antitrust and consumer rights. Days earlier, Klobuchar had written an open letter to Live Nation chief Michael Rapino, expressing “serious concerns about the state of competition in the ticketing industry”.
“The solutions are there for the taking. Some of them are small things that can be done right away”
The letter came just weeks after a coalition of American consumer, artist and lobbying groups launched a Break Up Ticketmaster campaign, claiming that artists and venues are being exploited by the company. However, several industry commentators were quick to point out that unprecedented demand for Taylor Swift tickets had little to do with Ticketmaster’s relationship with Live Nation.
In her closing comments, Klobuchar suggested the strong turnout reflected people’s desire to see live concerts.
“We are very interested in actually doing something and not just throwing popcorn,” she added. “The solutions are there for the taking. Some of them are small things that can be done right away. Some of them are things that the Justice Department might order as either part of their oversight with the consent decree, or new investigations, or new outcomes – some of which have been discussed here. Some of them are things that we can do right here.
“Of course, we’re always going have some some disagreements… But there is general agreement on some of these ideas when it comes to pricing and transparency and the like.”
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Music Modernization Act passed by US Senate
Campaigners are today celebrating the unanimous passing of the Music Modernization Act (MMA) by the US Senate. The bill, which now awaits reconsideration by the House and a signature from the president, aims to initiate a complete overhaul of the way music is monetised in the US.
Recognising the “momentous day”, National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) president and CEO David Israelite says: “The Senate vote marks a true step forward towards fairness for the people at the heart of music who have long been undervalued due to outdated laws.”
Included in the 185-page bill is the CLASSICS Act (Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service and Important Contributions to Society Act). Under current laws, only artist recordings made after 1972 have a federal right to be remunerated when played on digital radio. The CLASSICS Act would see SoundExchange establish royalty payments for music made pre-1972.
“[Today] creators of music moved one step closer to getting paid more fairly and industry forces that fought to maintain an unfair and harmful status quo were rebuffed”
Also included in the MMA is the Allocation for Music Producers Act, which will recognise music producers and engineers by writing them into US copyright law. Studio professionals will be provided with a “consistent, permanent” process for collecting digital royalties for their “contributions to the creation of music.”
Commenting on the passing of the Music Modernization Act, Michael Huppe, president and CEO of SoundExchange, the sole organisation designated to collect and distribute royalties by the US Congress, says: “[Today] creators of music moved one step closer to getting paid more fairly and industry forces that fought to maintain an unfair and harmful status quo were rebuffed.
“Now, SoundExchange’s 170,000-member community has just one word for the House of Representatives: Encore.”
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