President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Monday that takes aim at “ticket scalping,” according to Reuters. Per the order, the Federal Trade Commission must collaborate with the U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to make sure that ticket resellers are following competition laws; Bondi and Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, are now also expected to ensure scalpers are in compliance with IRS rules as well. It also enforces the BOTS Act to keep scalpers from using computer programs to buy available ticket inventory automatically so they can be resold at unfairly high prices.
The president was joined in Washington, D.C. during the signing by Kid Rock. “It doesn’t matter your politics,” said Rock from the Oval Office. “I’m a capitalist and a deregulation guy, but they’ve tried this in some places in Europe, and it seems to be the only thing that allows us, as artists, to be able to get the tickets into the hands of the fans at the prices we set.”
Following the news, Live Nation released a statement: “Scalpers and bots prevent fans from getting tickets at the prices artists set, and we thank President Trump for taking them head-on. We support any meaningful resale reforms — including more enforcement of the BOTS act, caps on resale prices, and more.”
According to a White House fact sheet, per Reuters, “Ticket scalpers use bots and other unfair means to acquire large quantities of face-value tickets, then resell them at an enormous markup on the secondary market, price-gouging consumers and depriving fans of the opportunity to see their favorite artists without incurring extraordinary expenses.”
The White House claims that some fans pay as much as 70 times the face value of tickets when buying from scalpers, with none of the profit going to the artists.
The live entertainment industry has come under scrutiny in recent years after Ticketmaster broke during the on-sale for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, leading to tickets priced at astronomical fees on the resell market.
In 2022, New York State passed legislation to protect consumers from unfair pricing, but Rolling Stone reported that year that compliance was low at the time. In January 2023, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar held a Senate Judiciary Hearing Committee hearing to entertain complaints Swfities and fans of Bruce Springsteen and others who had trouble buying tickets at fair prices. That year, Live Nation attempted to get ahead of resellers by pushing for a “Fair Ticketing act.” But last year, the DoJ filed a lawsuit to break up concert promoter Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s alleged monopoly on the touring industry, complicating the issue. (Live Nation denied the charges).
“This is a major victory for concertgoers, for sports fans, for people who really want to see a change,” Klobuchar said of the lawsuit in a Rolling Stone interview at the time. “So I hope it will be resolved as soon as possible.”
Although Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which Reuters reports holds a 70 percent market share on ticketing, sought to have the DoJ’s lawsuit dismissed, a judge decided earlier this month that it should go forward. Live Nation leadership had previously been “hopeful” that the Trump administration would side with them on the lawsuit.
At the end of last year, the Federal Trade Commission set an all-in ticketing rule, to make fees more transparent. The FTC was also mentioned in the proposed Ticket Act, which required the FTC ro report on how it was enforcing the BOTS Act.
This article was updated on March 31 at 8:16 p.m. ET to include a statement from Live Nation.
From Rolling Stone US
