Money Research Collective’s editorial team solely created this content. Opinions are their own, but compensation and in-depth research determine where and how companies may appear. Many featured companies advertise with us. How we make money.
Ticketmaster and StubHub Must Now Display Upfront Prices for Concert Tickets
By Pete Grieve MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
FTC rule bans hidden fees, requiring ticket sites to display full prices upfront by default.
The largest concert ticket services, including StubHub and Ticketmaster, will include fees in default prices in compliance with new federal rules, according to Monday announcements.
Concert ticket fees aren’t going away, but at least they’ll now be visible from the get-go. Ticketmaster announced Monday that shoppers will see “all-in” pricing going forward, including the service fee (but not local taxes or delivery fees, if they apply). A pop-up on Ticketmaster event pages confirms, “We’re all in.”
The reason for the sudden change: A new Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, rule just went into effect targeting hidden fees for live-event ticketing, as well as hotel and short-term rental lodging. The purpose, per the FTC, is to eliminate “bait-and-switch pricing” by which consumers are told the price is one amount, only for additional charges to show up late in the checkout process.
Consumer advocates say this rule is about addressing longstanding consumer frustrations with hidden fees. Service and fulfillment fees can add 25% or more to the cost of the ticket, but most ticket sites used to default to showing the fees only upon checking out. Customers would think they’d found a decent ticket option to discover later additional charges that raise the price significantly.
Even though some ticket companies resisted making these changes for years, the industry is generally cheering the synchronized switch to all-in pricing, which ensures that ticket companies are playing by the same rules.
FTC junk fee rule targets live events, short-term lodging
The FTC junk fee ban includes several key rules:
- “A business must display the total price more prominently than other pricing information.”
- Companies must “disclose excluded charges before asking for payment.”
- The rules advise to “avoid vague phrases” including “convenience fees,” “service fees” and “processing fees.”
Several companies appeared to adjust their policies ahead of the change, which was approved in December but became effective Monday. Airbnb, for example, now displays a price that includes cleaning and service fees by default.
In a reply to a customer on X Monday evening, StubHub wrote that its “teams are actively working on the update now across all of our platforms to ensure the total price, with fees, is displayed in search results.” By Tuesday, StubHub had implemented this change.
On Monday, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats announced that they, too, are now using all-inclusive pricing models.
Other ticketing platforms like TickPick were already offering tickets with upfront prices displayed before checkout. With all the major companies now displaying total prices, it should be easier for fans to quickly compare options on different ticket sites.
SeatGeek confirmed in its announcement that the change was done to be “in line” with the FTC guidelines.
“Fans deserve pricing that’s clear from the start,” SeatGeek Co-Founder and CEO Jack Groetzinger said in a release. “We’re proud to roll this out across our platform and encouraged to see the industry move in this direction.”
Lawmakers say they’re not done pushing for price transparency. New York State Senator James Skoufis, a Democrat who has championed legislation to stop anti-consumer ticketing practices at the state level, told Money that these recent announcements from ticket companies are too little too late.
“I’ll be watching with a healthy dose of skepticism that when they say ‘all-in’ they actually mean all-in. That ALL fees will appear — not just as a toggle option — but as the default setting prior to a single click made on a seat,” he wrote in a email. “There are those in this space who want to protect consumers and those who want to make money, and I’ve found the latter camp’s definition of all-in pricing is a far-cry from actual all-in pricing.”
More from Money:
Will Overdraft Fees Increase Under Trump? Here’s What 7 Banks Told Us
7 Inside Tips for Scoring the Best Tickets at the Cheapest Prices
DOJ Sues Live Nation, Ticketmaster to Break up ‘Monopolistic Control’ of Ticket Prices
Pete Grieve is a New York-based reporter who covers personal finance news. At Money, Pete covers trending stories that affect Americans’ wallets on topics including car buying, insurance, housing, credit cards, retirement and taxes. He studied political science and photography at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon. Pete began his career as a professional journalist in 2019. Prior to joining Money, he was a health reporter for Spectrum News in Ohio, where he wrote digital stories and appeared on TV to provide coverage to a statewide audience. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times and CNN Politics. Pete received extensive journalism training through Report for America, a nonprofit organization that places reporters in newsrooms to cover underreported issues and communities, and he attended the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in 2021. Pete has discussed his reporting in interviews with outlets including the Columbia Journalism Review and WBEZ (Chicago's NPR station). He’s been a panelist at the Chicago Headline Club’s FOIA Fest and he received the Institute on Political Journalism’s $2,500 Award for Excellence in Collegiate Reporting in 2017. An essay he wrote for Grey City magazine was published in a 2020 book, Remembering J. Z. Smith: A Career and its Consequence.