Photo: Alamy
Musician Kid Rock joined President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday as the president signed an executive order to crack down on ticket scalping.
The order seeks to bring down prices and remove unnecessary charges for live events for Americans.
“Anyone who’s bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 years — no matter what your politics are — knows that it’s a conundrum,” said Kid Rock.
“You can buy a ticket for $100. By the time you check out, it’s $170. You don’t know what you’ve been charged for,” Kid Rock said. “But, more importantly, the bots, you know, they come in, they get all the good tickets to your favorite shows you want to go to, and then they’re relisted immediately for sometimes 400-500% markup.”
The order called out the unfair profit-making in the live event ticketing industry.
“My Administration is committed to making as accessible as possible the arts and entertainment that enrich Americans’ lives. The rent-seeking behaviors surrounding the ticketing industry are contrary to this goal. They are detrimental to consumers and capitalize on market distortions that must not be allowed to persist,” the order noted.
According to a White House fact sheet released on Monday, America’s live concert and entertainment sector generates an economic impact of $132.6 billion across the country and sustains over 900,000 jobs. Despite its significance, the industry has been plagued by unethical intermediaries who burden fans with excessive fees while offering no added value to the artists themselves.
Ticket scalpers often deploy automated bots and exploit loopholes to buy large numbers of tickets at face value, only to resell them at inflated prices on secondary markets. This practice drives up costs for genuine fans, making it difficult for many to attend shows without paying exorbitant amounts.
In extreme cases, ticket prices have soared to as much as 70 times their original value. None of that extra money benefits the performers—it ends up in the hands of scalpers and ticketing platforms.
Although the BOTS Act was passed over eight years ago to curb the use of bots in ticket purchasing, enforcement has been virtually nonexistent. To date, the Federal Trade Commission has taken action under the law just once.
