Ticketmaster, others agree to upfront, all-in prices as part of Biden war on junk fees

7:59 pm Thursday, June 15th, 2023

By Jarrett Renshaw

(Reuters) – Ticketmaster and other companies have agreed to offer consumers upfront, all-in pricing, the White House announced as it convened a meeting on Thursday to highlight efforts to crack down on so-called junk fees.

President Joe Biden hosted a meeting at the White House of private companies – including Live Nation’s Ticketmaster, SeatGeek and Airbnb – which have committed to fully disclose fees to consumers upfront. It is part of Biden’s broader effort to crack down on junk fees imposed by ticket companies, banks, airlines and other industries.

Biden said he was focused on companies that slapped fees onto purchases at the end of the billing process, after consumers had done their comparison price shopping. “There’s more to do to address the problem of online ticketing,” he added.

Biden has called on Congress to pass legislation that mandates upfront, all-in pricing for all ticket sellers, bans surprise resort fees charged by hotels, eliminates early termination fees charged by cable, internet, and cellphone companies, and bans family seating fees on airlines.

Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, will commit to roll out an upfront all-in pricing in September showing just one total price for more than 30 million fans who attend shows at the more than 200 Live Nation-owned venues and festivals across the country, the White House said.

The Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition was unimpressed with the agreement that Ticketmaster made, saying the company needed to be broken up to stop “exorbitant fees on top of the actual ticket, with multiple reports of fees that cost more than a ticket itself.”

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said the agreement was a step in the right direction but insufficient.

“Rather than a voluntary patchwork varying by company, Americans deserve a basic disclosure standard so they can be fully aware of the prices and fees they’re being charged. The days of padding corporate profits by nickel and diming consumers are numbered,” he said.

Under criticism in November, Ticketmaster denied any anticompetitive practices and noted it remained under a consent decree with the Justice Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation, adding that there was no “evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree.”

SeatGeek, a ticketing platform that serves both the primary and secondary market, will roll out product features over the summer to make it easier for its millions of customers to shop on the basis of all-in price, the White House said.

(This story has been refiled to remove an extraneous word from paragraph 2)

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Mary Milliken, Stephen Coates and Jonathan Oatis)