Live Nation CEO Says Resale Tickets Should Be Capped

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said that he supports capping ticket resale prices in the U.S.

During the Bloomberg Screentime conference, Rapino said, “We would love for resale to be regulated,” noting that it should be capped at 20%. He pointed to Oasis’ reunion tour, which saw billions of requests for tickets. Rapino said that “bots” are part of a $12 billion industry, which makes it an “arms race” for Ticketmaster to prevent them from snatching up tickets.

“What really pisses [fans] off is scalpers selling $4,000 tickets,” Rapino said.

Notably, however, Live Nation and its ticketing subsidiary Ticketmaster have been under fire for their use of dynamic pricing, which sees prices increase based on demand. For Oasis’ tour, fans lashed out at the ticketing company after seeing tickets jump to 3-4x the originally advertised “face value” price.

The practice of dynamic pricing is not new – though its use has been more rare abroad than in the United States. While its supporters argue that such practices discourage “scalping” by making it harder for people to turn a profit by reselling tickets, it has drawn extreme backlash from fans, who often feel ripped off by the very bands they are trying to see.

Over the past year, fans across all genres have been victims of dynamic pricing; from Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter to Sleep Token and Green Day, fans have lashed-out at Ticketmaster. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour presale debacle ultimately sparked an investigation by the Department of Justice into the ticketing giant, which led to an an antitrust lawsuit from the department alongside 39 states and the District of Columbia. The suit alleges monopolistic and anticompetitive practices and aims to break-up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.