President Joe Biden, in a briefing on June 15, spoke on his progress in eliminating “junk fees” that companies often charge. Many major ticketing companies, such as Live Nation, SeatGeek, and xBk will be switching to “all-in” ticket pricing, where all fees will be disclosed upfront.
As stated in his State of the Union Address, Joe Biden planned to fight against junk fees. These junk fees are hidden charges that companies add onto a person’s bills without them really being able to do anything about it. This can often pose an issue for working class people, where these extra charges can quickly add up. For the live music industry, this often occurs at the end of the purchasing process after a person has already spent time comparing options. According to Biden, the solution to this is “all-in pricing,” where all fees are presented upfront in order to not surprise consumers at the end of their purchase.
Biden mentioned several companies represented at the briefing who had already been using the process, such as TickPick, DICE, Newport Festival Foundation, and Airbnb. Some had been using all-in pricing for years, whereas others, like Airbnb, only started recently.
One of the companies to recently agree to this plan was Live Nation, which will automatically list all prices at its own venues upfront starting this September. Customers will also have the option of an all-in option for all other tickets on the platform. Other companies joining it include: SeatGeek, a smaller, mobile-focused ticketing company; and xBk, a small venue in Des Moines, Iowa.
This is real transparency, which leads to more competition, brings down costs for working Americans, keeps growing our economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.
President Joe Biden
Biden called for competitors to these companies to follow suit and adopt this pricing model as well. He affirmed that this was not the final step, and there was more work to do to address issues in the online ticketing industry and with junk fees. Biden also thanked Congress for the legislation they are working on to address junk fees across industries.
A transcript of President Biden’s briefing can be found on the White House website.
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