By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump on Monday planned to sign an executive order aimed at protecting fans from “exploitative ticket scalping” and reforming the U.S. live entertainment ticketing industry, according to a White House fact sheet seen by Reuters.
The order directs Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to ensure that ticket scalpers are in full compliance with the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service and other applicable law, the fact sheet said.
The order directs the Federal Trade Commission to work with the U.S. attorney to ensure that competition laws are appropriately enforced in the concert and entertainment industry, it said.
In January, U.S. senators assailed Live Nation Entertainment’s lack of transparency and inability to block bot purchases of tickets, in a hearing called after a major fiasco involving ticket sales for a Taylor Swift concert tour.
Live Nation Entertainment Inc’s subsidiary Ticketmaster, which has been unpopular with fans for years, has drawn fresh heat from U.S. lawmakers over how it handled ticket sales last fall for Swift’s “Eras” tour, her first in five years.
Experts say Ticketmaster commands more than a 70% market share of primary ticket services for major U.S. concert venues.
The fact sheet singled out bot sales in particular.
“Ticket scalpers use bots and other unfair means to acquire large quantities of face-value tickets, then re-sell them at an enormous markup on the secondary market, price-gouging consumers and depriving fans of the opportunity to see their favorite artists without incurring extraordinary expenses,” it said.
(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Howard Goller)
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