President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that targeted ticket resellers and scalpers who profit from jacking up the prices.
Recording artist Kid Rock joined the president for the signing. The order directs the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to team up with state attorneys general to enforce laws that prevent entertainers and fans from being overcharged and price gouged by resellers, per The Hill.
The EO also highlights the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act and promotes it being enforced by consumer protection authorities.
It also ensures price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchasing process, including the secondary ticket market, as a better protection for concertgoers. The EO says it will take action to prevent “unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct” in the secondary ticketing market.
“Anyone who’s bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 years, no matter what your politics are, knows it is a conundrum,” Kid Rock, who was decked out in red, white, and blue, told reporters.
“If you buy a ticket for 100 bucks by the time you check it out, it’s 170. You don’t know what you can charge for it, but more importantly, these bots you know, they come in to get all the good tickets to your favorite shows you want to go to, and then they’re relisted immediately for sometimes a 4 or 500% markup.”
Kid Rock explained that the artists “don’t see any of that money.”
“It bothers him, it bothers a lot of other artists too,” Trump said of Kid Rock.
Trump mentioned tackling high concert ticket prices while on the campaign trail last year.
“Scalpers and bots prevent fans from getting tickets at the prices artists set, and we thank President Trump for taking them head-on. We support any meaningful resale reforms — including more enforcement of the BOTS act, caps on resale prices, and more,” Live Nation Entertainment told The Daily Wire in a statement on Tuesday morning.
Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino echoed that sentiment in an X post thanking President Trump and Kid Rock for “taking ticket-scalping head on.”
