Live Nation and Ticketmaster set to eliminate their hidden fees

President Joe Biden had called out the ticketing giants for their “junk fees” during his State of the Union address in February. “We can stop service fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events and make companies disclose all the fees upfront,” he said.

Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation Entertainment, has been under fire recently, for the way they've been handling high-demand concert tickets. Ticketmaster cancelled the public sale date for Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour after millions of fans crashed the site, leaving a huge amount of people without tickets, during the pre-sale. After Swift called them out for it, they issued an apology to her, noting that the pre-sale also resulted in "the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day," and they were unable to keep up with the demand.

#TaylorSwift issues statement regarding the Ticketmaster situation for her ‘Eras Tour’:

“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” pic.twitter.com/2v37GShu0g

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 18, 2022

I AM AS SICKENED AS YOU ALL ARE BY TODAY'S TICKETMASTER 'FEES' DEBACLE. TO BE VERY CLEAR: THE ARTIST HAS NO WAY TO LIMIT THEM. I HAVE BEEN ASKING HOW THEY ARE JUSTIFIED. IF I GET ANYTHING COHERENT BY WAY OF AN ANSWER I WILL LET YOU ALL KNOW. X

— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023

Earlier this year, The Cure announced that tickets for their upcoming North American tour would not be "transferable" as they want to minimise "resale and keep prices at face value", and after speaking about how their system is "far from perfect", Robert Smith responded to fans seeing Ticketmaster adding extra fees to The Cure's tour tickets, saying he was "as sickened as you all are".

He later shared an update after speaking to Ticketmaster, revealing that the ticketing giant agreed to refund $10 to verified fan accounts for lowest ticket price transactions, and $5 for all other verified fan account transactions.

National Independent Talent Organization said in a statement: “We applaud President Biden’s announcement on ticket fee transparency as an important first step. NITO calls on all ticket sellers to clearly show fans the total price of a ticket up front but also provide an itemized breakdown so fans understand the ticket price set by the artist and the fees added by ticket sellers."