Musician Kid Rock joins ‘Varney & Co.’ details his recent podcast interview with Bill Maher and weighs in on President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.
The head of one of the biggest companies in entertainment is praising the administration’s move to cut down on price-gouging that has proliferated in the concert industry.
Live Nation Entertainment Inc. CEO Micheal Rapino thanked the administration for “taking ticket scalping head-on,” saying the order will protect American consumers and artists.
The company, which owns Live Nation and TicketMaster and is seen as a dominant force in the live entertainment industry, promoting, operating and managing ticket sales for live entertainment, saw its stock jump on the news.
The administration said America’s live concert and entertainment industry supports 913,000 jobs and has a total nationwide economic impact of $132.6 billion “but it has become blighted by unscrupulous middle-men who impose egregious fees on fans with no benefit to artists.” The order, which Trump signed Tuesday alongside musician Kid Rock, is aimed at bringing “commonsense reforms to America’s live entertainment ticketing industry.”
“The majority of us want to get the prices we set into the hands of fans at those prices,” Rock told Stuart Varney on “Varney & Co.”
The crux of the issue is that scalpers are leveraging bots to acquire large quantities of face-value tickets, then re-sell them at a significant markup on the secondary market, and price-gouging consumers.
Currently, Live Nation said it stops over 200 million bots a day, which is a number that “continues to grow exponentially.” The company said it also innovated Face Value Exchanges, which is a feature that allows fans to resell tickets to other fans at the original price they paid. Still,”more efforts are needed to curb runaway resale that hurts American fans and consumers, and we support future actions from the administration and other state policymakers,” the company said.
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“We support any meaningful resale reforms – including more enforcement of the BOTS act, caps on resale prices, and more,” Rapino posted on X.
Singer Jesse Leach of Killswitch Engage performs at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas on March 13, 2025. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
Under the order, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was instructed to collaborate with the attorney general to ensure that laws are properly enforced in the concert and entertainment industry. This includes enforcing the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which took effect eight years ago, and encouraging its enforcement by state consumer protection authorities.
The administration stated that in the time since its enactment, the FTC has only enforced the BOTS Act twice. The law is designed to prevent scalpers from using bots to purchase tickets.
Keith Urban performs onstage for the Country Rising Benefit Concert at Bridgestone Arena on Nov. 12, 2017, in Nashville, Tennessee. (John Shearer/Country Rising / Getty Images)
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The FTC was also directed to ensure price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process, including the secondary ticketing market. The agency must also ensure there is no unfair, deceptive and anti-competitive conduct in the secondary ticketing market.
In 180 days, the Treasury, the Department of Justice and the FTC will have to summarize actions already taken to address the issue and recommend additional regulations or legislation needed to further protect consumers.
