President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that takes aim at ticket scalpers and “rent-seeking behaviors surrounding the ticketing industry.”
The order denounced scalpers for using “bots and other unfair means to acquire large quantities of face-value tickets” and reselling them at “an enormous markup on the secondary market, price-gouging consumers.”
As the president signed the order, he was joined by Kid Rock in Washington, D.C. “Anyone who’s bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 years, no matter what your politics are, knows it’s a conundrum,” Rock said from the Oval Office. “You buy a ticket for $100, by the time you check out it’s $170… But more importantly, these bots — they come in and get all the good tickets to your favorite shows you want to go to. Then they’re re-listed immediately for sometimes a 500 percent markup. The artists don’t see any of that money.” Rock added, “I would love down the road if there’d be some legislation to actually put a cap on the resale tickets.”
Per the order, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) must collaborate with 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 Better Online Ticket Sales (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 White House claimed that some reports show 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.
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.”
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 compliance was low at the time. In January 2023, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar held a Senate Judiciary Hearing Committee hearing to entertain complaints from Swifties, 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 Department of Justice 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 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 FTC set an all-in ticketing rule, to make fees more transparent. The FTC was also mentioned in the proposed Ticket Act, which required the agency 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 and at 11:18 p.m. ET to include additional information from the executive order.
