Pascrell Praises Biden Announcement on Junk Fees

Live Nation promise for transparency demands action; monopoly remains a consumer menace

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), a longtime congressional champion against corporate excess, today praised President Biden’s crusade against costly junk fees and showed appreciation for companies touted at the White House that followed the President’s lead in lowering prices for American consumers.

“Americans are sick and tired and fed up with the endless line of expensive junk fees we are subjected to by greedy companies,” said Congressman Pascrell. “No American paying a cable bill, or taking a vacation flight, or buying a ticket to see Taylor Swift should be soaked with hidden extras and add-ons. The entire process is demeaning, demoralizing, and deters consumers’ participation in the marketplace. President Biden’s drive against these fees is revolutionary – and clearly producing results with some companies at long last changing their practices. Amen.

Regarding Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s promise today to finally provide transparency of prices, Pascrell added, “Few industries in the entire country are abused and manipulated with shady practices and secret fees as much as live events, with Live Nation-Ticketmaster being the worst offender of all. Live Nation’s promise today to give Americans price transparency at their venues is encouraging, but we need all-in pricing at all venues, for all live events, and on all ticket selling services now. For nearly 15 years, I have been calling for rules over the broken live events marketplace. My federal BOSS and SWIFT ACT legislation would mandate in law all-in pricing for true transparency. Not until every seller offers all-in pricing can consumers get the comparison shopping experience for tickets that they deserve. This company has made unfulfilled promises before and I’ll wait and hope this actually happens. In the meantime will continue to urge Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s breakup.”

Since 2009, Congressman Pascrell has been the leader in Congress seeking the creation of rules for the corrupt live events ticket market. Last month, Pascrell reintroduced his Boss and Swift Act, which would address issues including hidden fees, on-sale transparency, buyer protections, speculative tickets, and deceptive white label websites.

Pascrell has been a leader in Congress calling for regulation of the opaque live events ticket market. Pascrell was an early critic of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, and repeatedly urged the Obama administration to reject it, warning that the union would crush competition and harm consumers. In May 2018, Pascrell wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on his attempts to impose greater positive regulation on the broken live events ticket market.

On March 22, 2022, Rep. Pascrell wrote to the heads of the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division urging them to overhaul federal guidelines to make it easier to overturn bad mergers. As part of the agencies’ joint inquiry into modernizing merger regulations, Pascrell flagged the Live Nation-Ticketmaster as a “posterchild of consolidation gone bad” and urged its dissolution.

Two months later, Reps. Pascrell and Pallone wrote a letter to the then-Federal Trade Commission highlighting a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study which found a myriad of consumer protection and competition issues in the primary and secondary live event ticket markets.

The GAO report was commissioned in response to Pallone and Pascrell’s work, and the members urged Simons to do more to protect consumers in the marketplace. In response, the FTC organized a workshop on event tickets held in June 2019 to review many of the challenges faced by ticket-buying fans. Pascrell attended a House Energy and Commerce Committee oversight hearing in early 2020 on the lack of transparency in the ticket marketplace.

A full section-by-section breakdown of the BOSS and SWIFT ACT is available here.

Text of the BOSS and SWIFT ACT is here.