Hidden commissions and junk charges when buying tickets for concerts and events will no longer be an unpleasant surprise for the user in the United States, at least for now. The conglomerate formed by Ticketmaster y Live Nation has promised to be more transparent with its pricing policy after pressure exerted by President Joe Bidenwho brought up the issue in his State of the Union address in February.
“Starting in September, Live Nation will automatically list all advance prices for all event tickets in over 200 of its own venues, benefiting Live Nation. more than 30 million customers“, said Biden last Thursday after a meeting with representatives of the sector in the White House. “It will give consumers the option of an all-inclusive price for all the other tickets they sell on their platform.”
The change does not mean the elimination of these charges, as was Biden’s ambition, but it does prevent the breakdown of management expenses from being hidden from the start, which usually significantly increases the final price of the ticket. In his speech in the House of Representatives at the beginning of the year, the president referred to charges such as those applied in hotels, the so-called resort feesincluding those establishments that do not even have enough services to charge an additional fee.
Not only Live Nation and Ticketmaster have joined the initiative, both owned by Live Nation Entertainment, but SeatGeek, xBx, TickPick, DICE and other companies in the sector. Representatives of all of them they met with Biden last Thursday in Washington to discuss the matter.
The announcement comes after the Ticketmaster fiasco by Taylor Swift tour ticket sales in November of last year, a chaotic situation that led to a barrage of lawsuits and a hearing by a Senate committee. The company has since tried to quash criticism of its pricing and fee structure.