Live Nation endorses 20% ticket resale cap, full artist control
Live Nation endorses a 20% ticket resale cap along with giving artists “full control” of how their tickets are resold.
Live Nation’s position was filed with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) after the two federal agencies requested public input on “unfair practices in the live entertainment marketplace.”
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) also filed comments that called on the Feds to “rein in the deceptive practices that dominate ticket resale.
But NIVA added a second “threat to live music” – Live Nation.
In a strongly worded statement, NIVA calls for breaking Live Nation and Ticketmaster into four companies: ticketing, promotion, advertising/sponsorship, and artist management. The live music trade group also wants a $500 million annual independent “Venue and Promoter Rebuilding Fund” paid for by Live Nation.
Live Nation endorses 20% ticket resale cap
A DoJ lawsuit alleging that Live Nation engaged in monopolistic practices is scheduled to begin in March 2026. So in its comments, Live Nation stayed focused on the secondary resale of concert tickets.
“The secondary resale market is now a $10–15 billion industry built on arbitrage, dominated not by fans, but by professional scalpers.,” Live Nation said in a statement.
Tickets scalpers use bots and fake accounts to buy tickets before fans can, post deceptive and speculative listings and often resell tickets at markup exceeding 100%.
“the single most impactful step policymakers can take”
The solution, says the concert giant, is a national 20% cap on both resale markups and service fees for concert tickets: “This is the single most impactful step policymakers can take to improve fairness in ticketing.”
StubHub, VIVID and other ticket resale marketplaces say that caps would put them out of business, which for both Live Nation and NIVA may be the point.
Live Nation also supports:
- giving artists full control over how their concerts tickets are resold
- enforcing and strengthening the BOTS Act to stop ticket harvesting
- shutting down fake ticket listings and deceptive websites
“Fans deserve a fair shot at concert tickets at the prices artists set. Artists deserve the right to protect their work,” said Live Nation. “The concert industry deserves a system that preserves the artist-fan connection, not one corrupted by profiteering interlopers.”
Bruce Houghton
“Live Nation endorses 20% ticket resale cap” first appeared on Hypebot..com.
