By Allen Cone Entertainment News – UPI.com
March 31 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order on ticket prices in an effort to end price gouging where tickets on the resale market hit thousands of dollars for Taylor Swift concerts. In the executive order, the Federal Trade Commission was directed to work with Attorney General Pam Bondi to make competition laws are enforced for concerts and other shows. The Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016 allows the FTC to take action against individuals and companies that use bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and resell them.
The order will, if appropriate, take enforcement action to prevent “unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct” for all stages of the ticket-buying process for consumers, including the secondary ticketing market.
The Justice Department and Treasury Department were directed to ensure that ticket scalpers are operating in full compliance with the Internal Revenue Code and other laws. The agencies must deliver a report within 180 days. Musician Kid Rock was present at the signing in the Oval Office. “I’ve spoken to him over the years about it and it bothers him,” Trump said about Kid Rock, who appeared the Republican National Convention last July in Milwaukee. “It bothers a lot of other artists. They go out with a $100 ticket, and it sells for $2,000 the following night.”
Trump, admitted he hadn’t known much about price gouging, said “I checked it out, and it is a big problem.” Trump owned casinos with live entertainment. Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, said in the White House: “Anyone who’s bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 years, no matter what your politics are, knows it is a conundrum. If you buy a ticket for 100 bucks by the time you check it out, it’s 170. You don’t know what you can charge for it, but more importantly, these bots you know, they come in to get all the good tickets to your favorite shows you want to go to, and then they’re relisted immediately for sometimes a 4 or 500% markup.”
Resale prices skyrocketed for Swift’s worldwide Eras Tour from March 2023 to December 2024. Face value tickets ranged from $49 to $499, plus fees but on the resale market they hit $30,000, Axios reported. In May 2024, the Justice Department, under President Joe Biden, as well as 30 state and district attorneys general, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation. The company allegedly abused its industry dominance to harm fans nationwide. In December, the FTC banned hidden “convenience” or “service” fees for concert tickets at checkout.
America’s live concert and entertainment industry has a total nationwide economic impact of $132.6 billion and supports 913,000 jobs, a White House said in a fact sheet. “But it has become blighted by unscrupulous middle-men who impose egregious fees on fans with no benefit to artists,” according to the fact sheet. “Ticket scalpers use bots and other unfair means to acquire large quantities of face-value tickets, then re-sell 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.
“By some reports, fans have paid as much as 70 times the face value of a ticket price to obtain a ticket. When this occurs, the artists do not receive any additional profit-it goes solely to the scalper and the ticketing agency.” Some states have specific laws to prevent ticket gouging, including caps on resale prices or requiring licenses for resellers. In some states, they can’t be sold above face value near the venue.
The order didn’t mention sporting events but can be considered entertainment. 2025 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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