Following a wave of regulations banning the surprise fees that appear at the end of a transaction, Ticketmaster stopped charging the extra few dollars it added to each order at checkout. Typically shared with the venue, the order processing fee was a boon to a global platform that sells hundreds of millions of tickets a year.
But documents obtained by the Guardian show that while Ticketmaster eliminated this fee to comply with the rules, the company simply raised the cost of different fees in a number of its venues to ensure it didn’t lose money.
“To account for the loss of order processing revenue, we must adjust fees to offset the revenue loss,” Ticketmaster wrote in an email to the Findlay Toyota Center in Arizona last year. The venue eliminated a $6 order processing fee, but raised the service fee on each ticket by $2 instead.
The email was included as part of Ticketmaster’s contract with the venue and obtained through a public records request. The Guardian obtained the agreements for 26 publicly owned venues around the country, ranging from town theatres to stadiums such as the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and the Alamodome in San Antonio.
Nearly all the contracts describe an order processing fee like the one in the Findlay Toyota Center that is no longer permitted. At least eight venues amended their contracts to raise other fees following the all-in pricing rules, contracts and emails show.
Former regulators told the Guardian that rolling an illegal fee into another charge could violate the Federal Trade Commission’s rule against misrepresenting fees, which took effect last May.
John Newman, a former economist at the Federal Trade Commission and a law professor at the University of Memphis, who reviewed the memos, called them “potentially concerning”.
Just getting rid of the processing fee may not be enough to comply with the regulation, he said. “Ticketmaster may effectively still be charging the fee, just disguising it as something else. That type of behavior can run afoul of the FTC rule.”
Ticketmaster did not respond to detailed questions about how it responded to the state and federal pricing regulations including how many venues raised fees in response to the all-in pricing rules.
“Since May 2025, tickets on Ticketmaster.com have displayed the full price upfront in line with the FTC’s all-in pricing rule. We also provide explanations of fees during the purchase process and maintain a dedicated page with additional information,” the company said in a statement.
“Fees help cover the real costs of live events, including venue staffing, operations and building maintenance, as well as ticketing technology, security, customer support, fraud prevention, and payment processing. Venues generally set and retain the majority of service fees, while Ticketmaster typically retains about 5–7% of the total ticket price, with profit representing roughly 2%.”
Live Nation Entertainment, which includes both Live Nation and Ticketmaster, is facing an antitrust trial over allegations it operates an illegal monopoly in the live music industry. Much of the case has focused on whether the company uses long-term, exclusive contracts with venues to stifle competition.
The Department of Justice abruptly reached a settlement with the company only days after the trial began in early March, drawing criticism from several lawmakers, who called the deal “weak”. A coalition of more than 30 states chose to continue the litigation. Live Nation Entertainment has denied that it operates a monopoly.
The Biden administration first announced a crackdown on “junk fees” in October 2022, coining the phrase to describe a range of excessive charges, including hotel resort fees, credit card late fees and ticket service fees. The initiative became integral to Biden’s appeal to working-class voters as the general election approached.
“Junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most other folks in homes like the one I grew up in, like many of you did,” Biden said in his State of the Union address in February 2023.
Executives at Live Nation Entertainment took note. In an earnings call just days after Joe Biden’s speech, the company’s chief financial officer, Joe Berchtold, said Ticketmaster was unfairly lumped into the conversation about junk fees, explaining that “most of the money goes to the venues. They think the service charges are just some arbitrary add-on to Ticketmaster pockets, which is not the case.”
Live Nation Entertainment agreed with a proposal to ban junk fees, Berchtold continued. In fact, the company was advocating for legislation mandating all-in pricing so consumers could see the total price of a ticket upfront, including any fees. The policy would not have any material impact on the business, he added.
But Ticketmaster had already included protections in a number of its ticketing service contracts. Documents obtained by the Guardian show that in at least 18 venue agreements, the company reserved the right to renegotiate fees and ensure it remained “reasonably compensated” if any charges were no longer permitted. Essentially, even if regulators eliminated certain fees, the contracts gave Ticketmaster a way to recover that lost revenue.
Ticketmaster is a volume business. Last year, it earned fees on 346m tickets and made about $3bn in revenue, according to company filings. While that represents the number of tickets sold globally, it illustrates how lucrative an extra couple of dollars added to each order is for the company.
In June 2023, Live Nation Entertainment attended a White House roundtable alongside executives from SeatGeek and Airbnb. The company agreed to begin “all-in pricing” for tickets sold at its venues so consumers were not surprised by additional fees at the end of a transaction. It did not include any pledge to lower fees or ticket prices, but Biden called it a “win for consumers”.
State lawmakers began to consider regulating fees as well. In October of that year, California passed legislation banning hidden fees. While there was no restriction on the amount of fees a business could charge, the law required all mandatory charges to be included in the price of a good or a service.
By the time the law took effect in July 2024, Ticketmaster had written letters to multiple venues in California that it was scrapping its order processing fee in order to comply, according to records obtained by the Guardian.
To offset the lost revenue, the company wrote to the city of Sacramento that the amount Ticketmaster retained on each ticket to events at the city convention center complex would go up by about 25%. Instead of $3.45 on each ticket, it would now earn $4.25 on each ticket. The company sent the city of Cerritos a nearly identical letter raising Ticketmaster’s cut of each ticket at a performing arts venue in response to the new law as well, documents show.
It was within the bounds of California’s law. Still, the communications illustrate the limits of transparency laws to regulate dominant players, said John Kwoka, an economics professor at Northeastern University who has written frequently about the company as well as advised state attorneys general on litigation.
In a competitive market, consumers might choose a ticketing provider with lower fees, he said. But since Ticketmaster is the exclusive vendor for ticketing services of about 80% of the country’s venues, alternatives are often unavailable. If a fan wants to see a show at a venue that has an exclusive ticketing contract with Ticketmaster – they have to pay the fees.
“Since we remain largely hostage to Ticketmaster,” said Kwoka, “they have simply shifted which hand they have in our pockets.”
Other states followed California’s law, including Colorado, Virginia and Minnesota. The Federal Trade Commission proposed a rule to implement all-in pricing at the national level, too. And when the regulation was formally issued in the final days of the Biden administration, Live Nation Entertainment, again, publicly supported it.
“We’ve led the industry by adopting all-in pricing at all Live Nation venues and festivals, and applaud the FTC’s industry-wide mandate so fans will now be able to see the total price of a ticket right upfront no matter where they go to see a show or buy a ticket,” the company wrote in a December 2024 press release.
By the time the federal rule took effect last May, Ticketmaster had quietly raised fees in at least four other venues it contracted with, contracts show. Venues in Arizona, Florida, Missouri and Georgia eliminated the processing fee to comply with the all-in pricing rule but increased other charges instead. The Wintrust Arena in Chicago raised ticket fees by 2.3%. Florida State University raised ticket fees by 3%.
But the federal rule has more restrictions than the California law. While it does not limit the amount of fees that businesses may charge, companies may not misrepresent their fees and must disclose why they are charging them.
Serena Viswanathan, a former attorney for the Federal Trade Commission who worked on the rule said including this language in the regulation “is about being honest and transparent to consumers about what they’re paying”.
When companies use terms like “processing” or “service” fees, it’s difficult for a consumer to know what they are really paying for, she added. The rule was intended to end some of that obscurity.
“It really shows that all of these fees are kind of made up,” said Viswanathan.
Ultimately, only the FTC has the authority to determine whether Ticketmaster is in compliance with its own rule. Separately, the agency filed a suit against Ticketmaster and its parent company last September, which included allegations that the company deceived consumers by hiding mandatory fees until the end of the transaction.
Live Nation Entertainment disputed the allegation in its response, pointing to its compliance with the FTC’s regulation requiring all-in pricing.
A spokesperson for the FTC said it did not comment on individual practices of companies.
