The White House says Live Nation and Ticketmaster plan to start showing consumers upfront all-in pricing in September 2023, as part of a “junk fees” crackdown
Context & Ripple Effects
This commitment placed Live Nation and Ticketmaster among ticket sellers moving toward total-price disclosure under White House pressure. The policy path later progressed from an FTC proposal for upfront total-price disclosure to final rules covering concert tickets and other purchases.
For Ticketmaster, the pledge became an operational compliance issue rather than a one-time announcement: the company later said it was showing full ticket prices upfront as the FTC ban took effect. The story matters because it makes fee presentation a visible part of competition in a market already concentrated around major ticketing platforms.
First-order effects
- Live Nation and Ticketmaster must change their ticket-buying flow to present the total consumer price upfront beginning in September 2023, reducing the scope for fees to emerge late in checkout.
- Buyers can compare the actual purchase price earlier, while Ticketmaster’s advertised price becomes more directly comparable with competing sellers’ offers.
Second-order effects
- Other ticket sellers face pressure to match all-in displays, especially after Ticketmaster and SeatGeek pledged the practice and the FTC advanced a broader rulemaking process.
- Transparent totals can shift competition from the initial ticket price to the full transaction price, increasing scrutiny of service and facility-fee structures rather than eliminating those charges.
Third-order effects
- The pledge foreshadows price-display rules becoming a compliance baseline across ticketing and adjacent consumer markets, as later reflected in the FTC’s finalized upfront-pricing rules.
- If enforced consistently, fee transparency may make market power and pricing practices easier for consumers and regulators to evaluate, even where ticketing distribution remains concentrated.
The trend: Consumer-protection policy is pushing digital marketplaces to compete on all-in prices rather than low headline prices supplemented by late-stage fees.