Billie Eilish, Lorde, Green Day, the Pixies and Thurston Moore are among the hundreds of artists who have affixed their names to a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce supporting reform of the live event ticketing system.
Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong is among the artists supporting the bill.
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Entitled the Fans First Act (S. 3457), the bill in question seeks to address several key issues, namely transparency in ticket sales and protecting the general public from bots and those in the secondary ticketing hierarchy from encroaching on pre-sales and VIP packages.
The Fans First Act bill was introduced last December by Sens. John Cornyn, Amy Klobuchar, Marsha Blackburn, Peter Welch, Roger Wicker and Ben Ray Lujan. That bill, and the similar bipartisan TICKET Act (H.R. 3950) -- sponsored by Reps. Bilirakis, Schakowsky, and Armstrong, which passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- are not only targeting the resale market but also seeking to revamp the entire live ticketing experience, with new guidelines on ticket prices reflecting true dollar amounts (processing fees, taxes and the like) and giving fans a clearer understanding of seating details prior to arriving at the venue.
The letter states, in part: “We are joining together to say that the current system is broken: predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair price.”
Lorde and hundreds more have supported the proposed legislation.
The legislation comes in lieu of other bills introduced that aimed to strike down unfair ticketing practices, including the Boss and Swift Act, drawn up by Congressmen Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ-06). In a statement on Congressman Pascrell's website from last Ma, the description of the bill reads, "The legislation is named in honor of New Jersey hero Bruce Springsteen and fans of Taylor Swift who were blocked when trying to buy concert passes during the recent ticketing fiasco. The revised plan specifically addresses issues including hidden fees, on-sale transparency, buyer protections, speculative tickets, and deceptive white label websites."
If you recall, the Department of Justice was called upon to investigate when Swift's pre-sale that opened for "verified" fans for her Eras tour turned into a disaster. Swifties brought on a lawsuit, claiming Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation "intentionally and purposefully misled ticket purchasers by allowing scalpers and bots access" to the presale.
Ticket sale debacles for Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift led to Congressional inquiries.
The full letter was addressed to Chairwoman Maria Cantwell and Ranking Member Ted Cruz of the Senate Committee on Commerce and organized by the Fix The Tix Coalition, the National Independent Venue Association, Eventbrite and 30 more live event industry organizations and professionals, along with musicians such as Graham Nash, Chappell Roan, Indigo Girls and Duran Duran and those named above.
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