We’re in the fourth quarter of the 118th Congress and the clock is ticking fast. There are only a few more legislative days for Congress to pass dozens of bills before this session concludes and the next Congress will have to start drafting bills from scratch. One such bill is HR 3950, the Transparency In Charges for Key Events Ticketing Act (TICKET Act). It would fix issues that have bedeviled the live event industry for decades. It would require all-in pricing of tickets, ban speculative ticketing, prohibit deceptive websites, require refunds for canceled or postponed shows, and require the Federal Trade Commission to report on the prevalence of bots being used to purchase tickets.
This bill has been two years in the making. The Senate Judiciary Committee held the first hearing of the 118th Congress in January 2023, following the meltdown of Ticketmaster’s system when tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour went on sale. The hearing highlighted many well-known problems in the industry. Since then, members of Congress have introduced more than a half-dozen ticketing-related bills to address these problems. However, only one bill has risen to the top: the TICKET Act (HR 3950).
