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(CNN) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday aimed at ending ticket-price gouging for live entertainment.
The order directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to work with Attorney General Pam Bondi to ensure competition laws are enforced in the concert and entertainment industry. It aims to uphold price transparency throughout all stages of the ticket-buying process for consumers.
Musician Kid Rock, who also appeared at the Republican National Convention last July, was present at the signing in the Oval Office.
“I’ve spoken to him over the years about it and it bothers him,” Trump said about Kid Rock during the executive order’s signing. “It bothers a lot of other artists. They go out with a $100 ticket, and it sells for $2,000 the following night.”
Trump admitted that he hadn’t known much about price gouging, “but I checked it out, and it is a big problem.” He also encouraged Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, to say a few words on the matter.
“I want the fans to have fair ticket prices, to be able to go enjoy more shows,” Kid Rock said. “I’d like to take my ticket price lower, but if I set my ticket prices low, these bots immediately eat them up and they resell for hundreds of dollars more and I’m just making these bad actors rich.”
Trump’s order calls for more rigorous enforcement of the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, a 2016 law that allows the FTC to take action against individuals and companies that use bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and resell them.
The issue of price gouging drew heightened attention during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2022, when resale prices hit tens of thousands of dollars. The sky-high prices caused fierce backlash against Ticketmaster, the country’s biggest ticketing website and concert promoter, from lawmakers who accused the company of acting as a monopoly.
Last year, the Justice Department, along with 30 state and district attorneys general, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, alleging the company abused its industry dominance to harm fans nationwide.
In a statement to CNN, Live Nation said it supported efforts to reform ticket resale practices.
“Scalpers and bots prevent fans from getting tickets at the prices artists set, and we thank President Trump for taking them head-on. We support any meaningful resale reforms — including more enforcement of the BOTS act, caps on resale prices, and more,” it said.
Trump’s order builds upon efforts by the Biden administration to crack down on junk fees in the concert ticket space. In December, then-President Joe Biden’s FTC announced a final rule banning hidden “convenience” or “service” fees for concert tickets at checkout.
America’s live concert and entertainment industry has a total nationwide economic impact of $132.6 billion and supports 913,000 jobs, according to 2019 data from Oxford Economics.
The-CNN-Wire
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