Ticket Resale Practices Are Costing Fans $11 Billion Per Year

A new white paper by the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, a research and policy center at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, has revealed that ticket resale practices are costing live entertainment fans $11 billion every year.

Key findings:

• The report, How to Save Audiences $11 Billion on Live Events, posits that corporate middlemen and online ticketing platforms are driving the continued rise in ticket resale prices.

• It exposes how ticket brokers add $4.5 billion in resale upcharges, and ticketing platform service fees add another $6.8 billion in extra costs annually.

• While resale advocacy groups argue that secondary markets can save fans money when tickets sell below face value, the VPA’s data shows that fans lose $12 to price gouging for every $1 they save.

• The paper highlights policy solutions to making shows more affordable and accessible, such as limiting ticket resale to face value and capping service fees at 10%.

Industry response:

• The National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) released a statement supporting the paper’s findings and policy recommendations.

• It points out that those policy recommendations are “not radical ideas,” but are already in effect in Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, and Washington D.C.

• NITO Executive Director Nathaniel Marro said: “Stubhub and the resale giants have spent millions on lobbying to convince law makers they are saving consumers money. However, the facts are clear as day. Resale is costing fans billions of dollars each year, money that is being drained from our industry and never reaches the artists, crews or venues that actually put on these shows.”

• Stephen Parker, Executive Director of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), added: “Vanderbilt has given Congress, governors, state legislators, and attorneys general the most convincing evidence we’ve seen that resale price gouging has to be reined in.”