Biden calls for something I think we can all get behind

[retrofade]

President Biden on Wednesday called for limits to be placed on the fees that can be charged for tickets to live entertainment, eight days after an unusually bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which lawmakers assailed Ticketmaster and raised concerns about the broader ticketing industry.

The president promoted his proposal at a meeting of his competition council, urging Congress to pass what the White House called a “junk fee prevention act” that would crack down on four types of excessive fees, including online ticket fees for concerts and sporting events.

In a statement released before the meeting, the White House said Mr. Biden was specifically asking Congress “to prohibit excessive fees, require the fees to be disclosed in the ticket price and mandate disclosure of any ticket holdbacks that diminish available supply.”

Congress “should lower the huge service fees that companies like Ticketmaster slap onto tickets for concerts or sporting events that can easily add hundreds of bucks to a family’s night out,” Mr. Biden said at the competition council meeting.

“These unfair fees add up,” he said of the fees charged by airlines, hotels, wireless companies and ticketing businesses. “It’s a basic question of fairness.”

In a statement, Ticketmaster said it “strongly supports ticketing reforms that will benefit artists and fans, prevent fraud and clean up fraudulent practices in resale markets.”

“These basic steps should be the things everyone agrees on, including mandating all-in pricing and outlawing speculative ticketing,” the statement said. “We stand ready to work with the president and Congress on many common-sense ticketing reforms, while also speaking out against proposed legislation that would benefit scalpers over artists and fans.”

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Mr. Biden’s request for action on ticket fees came in conjunction with similar demands that Congress work to ban fees charged by airlines for family members to sit with young children; exorbitant early termination fees for TV, phone and internet service; and surprise resort and destination fees. Mr. Biden also announced that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had proposed a rule that would slash excessive credit card late fees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/arts/concert-ticket-fees-biden.html

[SAMO]

kudos to him for doing this...lol

would love to see the DOJ break up the live nation-ticketmaster monopoly...lol

thats one where its way overdue...lol

[madmartigan]

Thank you Swifties for this. 

[bornontheblue]

Joe Biden Hates America and is a probably a child molester. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

calm down. I am only kidding 

[Spaztecs]

OMG !

Old Senile Joe is messing with Capitalism and trying to turn Amerika into a Leftist Authoritarian State.

When will it ever end ? !

 

[GoDogs22]

Trying to take away people's ability to get fleeced by a massive corporation! He should be impeached for this!

[happycamper]

good. live music sux. its too loud. hopefully ticketmaster can expand even more to just "bar and grills with a band booked for saturday night" so i don't have to last minute change dinner plans to keep from getting a headache from mediocre kenny chesney covers. 

[AztecAlien]

Ticketmaster and others like them suck and I don't disagree with what's trying to be done. This topic has been discussed before. Ticketmaster and other companies will just continue to gouge people by raising their prices and reducing fees or eliminating them all together. The fees will just be hidden. America you know. 

 

[Spaztecs]

With the technology we have, it shouldn't be hard to limit ticket sales on the same credit card.

 

But, the venues like the fact that TicketMaster will buy out their show and they don't get stuck with the unsold tickets.

[SharkTanked]

It's a good idea, I just don't know how this ends up getting implemented. I mean I don't think it ends up changing what people are paying out, it just changes the packaging. Bizarre fees just get rolled into the bottom-line price instead. It will make things less deceptive, I guess, which is a good thing.

Also re Ticketmaster, this country has been total shit about trust busting since the Reagan Revolution. The underlying problem with a lot of this stuff is monopolies, or near monopolies, not weird fees. Or at least I see two very separate and distinct issues here.

[Spaztecs]

On 2/2/2023 at 1:31 PM, SharkTanked said:

It's a good idea, I just don't know how this ends up getting implemented. I mean I don't think it ends up changing what people are paying out, it just changes the packaging. Bizarre fees just get rolled into the bottom-line price instead. It will make things less deceptive, I guess, which is a good thing.

Also re Ticketmaster, this country has been total shit about trust busting since the Reagan Revolution. The underlying problem with a lot of this stuff is monopolies, or near monopolies, not weird fees. Or at least I see two very separate and distinct issues here.

Part and parcel of the same issue.

Most Industries only have a couple of players which leads to collusion instead of competition.

[SharkTanked]

On 2/2/2023 at 12:34 PM, Spaztecs said:

Part and parcel of the same issue.

Most Industries only have a couple of players which leads to collusion instead of competition.

Yeah I just see this EO(?) as treating the symptoms, not the disease.

[SAMO]

On 2/2/2023 at 12:36 PM, SharkTanked said:

Yeah I just see this EO(?) as treating the symptoms, not the disease.

which is why the DOJ should follow through with breaking it up...lol

vertical mergers in general should be examined with a lot more scrutiny...even if it means revisiting this one and others...as they tend to lead to these kinds of situations all the time...lol

[Spaztecs]

Where's Teddy Roosevelt when we need him ?

[SAMO]

On 2/2/2023 at 12:31 PM, SharkTanked said:

It's a good idea, I just don't know how this ends up getting implemented. I mean I don't think it ends up changing what people are paying out, it just changes the packaging. Bizarre fees just get rolled into the bottom-line price instead. It will make things less deceptive, I guess, which is a good thing.

Also re Ticketmaster, this country has been total shit about trust busting since the Reagan Revolution. The underlying problem with a lot of this stuff is monopolies, or near monopolies, not weird fees. Or at least I see two very separate and distinct issues here.

right...and this example in particular shows the shitty results of these sorts of mergers...essentially...ticketmaster merged with live nation to create one giant event production conglomerate that controls the vast majority of live music/entertainment venues and events...they've also been shown to have used that monopoly power resulting from that to engage in coercive behavior (beyond even the ridiculous fees)...lol

if there was ever a softball for trustbusting...this is it...lol

[SalinasSpartan]

On 2/2/2023 at 11:58 AM, AztecAlien said:

Ticketmaster and others like them suck and I don't disagree with what's trying to be done. This topic has been discussed before. Ticketmaster and other companies will just continue to gauge people by raising their prices and reducing fees or eliminating them all together. The fees will just be hidden. America you know. 

 

More specifically, America’s conception of how to enforce anti-trust laws. 

[AztecAlien]

On 2/2/2023 at 1:43 PM, SalinasSpartan said:

More specifically, America’s conception of how to enforce anti-trust laws. 

Same page. 

[NVGiant]

On 2/2/2023 at 11:47 AM, happycamper said:

good. live music sux. its too loud. hopefully ticketmaster can expand even more to just "bar and grills with a band booked for saturday night" so i don't have to last minute change dinner plans to keep from getting a headache from mediocre kenny chesney covers. 

[happycamper]

On 2/2/2023 at 4:21 PM, NVGiant said:

godddamn gonzaga fan 2021 gets all sort of replies with his dumbass cable takes and I get jack shit for a much spicier "+++++ live music " take. 

this place is an echo chamber

[RSF]

On 2/2/2023 at 3:27 PM, happycamper said:

godddamn gonzaga fan 2021 gets all sort of replies with his dumbass cable takes and I get jack shit for a much spicier "+++++ live music " take. 

this place is an echo chamber

Geez...you only posted it an hr ago.  You got a concert you're going to?