Massachusetts lawmakers have introduced a so-called “Taylor Swift bill” in an attempt to protect ticket buyers from surprise fees following the Ticketmaster fiasco last fall which saw ticket prices for Swift’s 2023 Eras tour rise over $22,000 on resale sites.
The Democratic state representative Dan Carey and the state senator John Velis have introduced An Act Ensuring Transparent Ticket Pricing, a bill that would require ticket sales companies such as Ticketmaster and SeatGeek to fully disclose the total cost of tickets prior to purchase, WFTX reported.
“We heard from a lot of fans who were just frustrated with the ticket-selling process. This would be one tool in the toolbox to help know the full price right away, to see what portion is fees and what portion is the price of the ticket,” Carey told the local news outlet.
“[The bill] doesn’t fully address all the junk fees. It just makes the customer aware of what the fees are at the outset and what portion of what you’re paying is a fee and what’s a ticket price,” he added.
The bill would also prohibit dynamic pricing, a pricing strategy that businesses use to gain increased profits by driving up their prices during high demand.
“What this bill is at the most fundamental level is a consumer protection bill,” Velis told WFTX, adding: “It enables folks to know their budget when they go in to buy these tickets and know this is the amount they’re ultimately going to be asked to spend.”
The bill’s introduction comes months after Ticketmaster faced widespread backlash following mass surges in ticket prices for Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated Eras tour last fall.
Tickets for the singer’s 52-date US tour cost between $49 and $449 each but due to high demand from millions of fans, many found themselves having to wait in online queues for up to eight hours while others found themselves too late to purchase tickets as Ticketmaster’s website crashed periodically.
As a result of the tour’s “historically unprecedented demand”, many tickets were swiftly listed on resale sites including StubHub for as much as $22,700 each.
In response to the chaos, Swift slammed Ticketmaster for its ticket handling, saying that it was “excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse”.
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked [Ticketmaster], multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,” Swift added.
Following the debacle, the US Senate judiciary committee held an antitrust hearing in January during which Democrats and Republicans alike slammed Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation over its monopoly in the ticketing industry.
