Pascrell Praises Historic Biden Crackdown on Junk Fees

White House to announces plan to end deceptive ticketing practices with all-in pricing requirements

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), who has let the charge for live event ticket pricing and fee reforms for over a decade, praised President Biden’s planned crackdown to end junk fees for a variety of services that rip off Americans.

“Millions of Americans are in a sour mood and it’s clear why: so many of us are sick and tired and fed up paying crooked junk fees for almost anything they do,” said Congressman Pascrell. “Today’s latest announcement is a major victory for Americans who remain under the thumb of deceptive ticketing pricing schemes. It has also been over three years since the FTC’s ticket workshop I pushed for where every major ticket seller in the primary and second marketplace announced their support for all in pricing. But President Biden is turning happy talk into action and accountability, and I believe he can get this consumer victory done. I have long led the charge for a legislative solution on all in pricing and greater consumer reforms to the ticketing industry. Through my updated BOSS and SWIFT ACT, we would actually move these reforms into law. President Biden and FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan are seeking to deliver a big win for regular Americans.”

Congressman Pascrell has been a leader in Congress against junk fees – particularly in the live entertainment industry. Pascrell is the head sponsor of the BOSS and SWIFT Act, landmark legislation to finally impose regulation on the broken live events market.

Pascrell was an early critic of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, and repeatedly urged the Obama administration to reject it, warning that the union would crush competition and harm consumers.

Pascrell and Rep. Pallone wrote a letter in 2018 to the then-Federal Trade Commission highlighting a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study which found a myriad of consumer protection and competition issues in the primary and secondary live event ticket markets. The GAO report was commissioned in response to Pallone and Pascrell’s work, and the members urged Simons to do more to protect consumers in the marketplace. In response, the FTC organized a workshop on event tickets held in June 2019 to review many of the challenges faced by ticket-buying fans. Pascrell attended a House Energy and Commerce Committee oversight hearing in early 2020 on the lack of transparency in the ticket marketplace.

On March 22, 2022, Pascrell wrote to the heads of the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division urging them to overhaul federal guidelines to make it easier to overturn bad mergers. As part of the agencies’ joint inquiry into modernizing merger regulations, Pascrell flagged the Live Nation-Ticketmaster as a “posterchild of consolidation gone bad” and urged its dissolution.

President Biden has made junk fees in the ticketing industry a key part of his legislative agenda. To solve many of the problems consumers have faced in the marketplace, the BOSS and SWIFT ACT forces greater transparency and protections to help consumers from unfair and deceptive acts imposed by ticket sellers.

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