Don’t Let Ticketmaster Turn Trump’s Reform into a Monopoly Shield

Originally published at National Review. 

When President Trump signed his March 2025 executive order directing federal agencies to fix the seemingly broken live entertainment market, he was standing up for ordinary Americans. Too many families have been priced out of concerts and sporting events by a system riddled with opaque pricing, aggressive automated bots that buy up and resell tickets in large quantities, and limited options.

The order gives the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, and Treasury Department until September 27 to propose reforms. As someone who served as chief economist at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, I know how critical it is that OMB ensures these proposals reflect the president’s intent: protect consumers, enforce the law, and expand competition — not reward powerful incumbents with a regulatory moat.

Unfortunately, Ticketmaster is now lobbying the administration to impose a resale price cap, limiting ticket resales to just 20 percent above face value. That may sound like a win for fans, but it’s not. It’s a clever attempt to crush rivals under the guise of reform, and it will only make the system worse.

It’s fashionable to call Ticketmaster a monopoly, but the reality is more complex. Yes, it’s dominant in primary ticketing. But there are many resale platforms — SeatGeek, StubHub, Vivid Seats — and competition is growing from direct-to-fan platforms and decentralized systems.

The only reason Ticketmaster still holds so much power despite the number of competing options is that government helped entrench the company.

Some state laws mandate that consumers can only resell their tickets on the same website they bought them from. This benefits Ticketmaster as the company controls more than 80 percent of the primary ticketing marketplace. The company is earning twice, once on the original sale and again on the resale.

The added business Ticketmaster has received because of government regulations like these have given its parent company Live Nation more capital to spend on amassing controlling interests in more event venues, with the tally now amounting to nearly 400 worldwide. Those venues, often receiving public subsidies, then lock in exclusive deals with one ticketing vendor. More often than not, that exclusive vendor is, of course, the industry’s dominant market player — Ticketmaster.

Now, instead of advocating that the Trump administration remove these government-created barriers, which, by limiting competition, raise prices on fans, Live Nation is proposing that Washington add more government red tape on the ticket industry through resale price controls, which would push up prices by further by reducing overall industry competition and innovation.

Resale Price Cap Would Weaken Ticketmaster’s Competition

Ticketmaster’s proposal to limit resale prices to 20 percent above face value isn’t about helping fans. It’s about killing off the smaller resale platforms that rely on pricing flexibility to survive.

While independent platforms would collapse, Live Nation/Ticketmaster would survive just fine. Unlike many of its competitors, its business isn’t based on resale profits. The company makes money from managing the vast majority of the primary ticketing marketplace, venue fees, artist management, and its exclusive partnerships. That’s why it can afford to call for a cap — because it knows its rivals can’t.

The data already show exactly what happens when other governments have gone down this road:

• In Ireland, a 2021 resale cap led to a surge in ticket fraud by 2024, as criminal networks filled the void.
• Ahead of the Paris Olympics, France saw hundreds of scam resale sites pop up due to restricted legitimate options.
• A 2025 U.K. government study found fraud rates in regulated resale markets were four times higher than in open ones.

In other words, price caps don’t stop unfair ticket resale practices. They just limit legitimate competition.

Fix the Rules, Don’t Rig the Market

President Trump was right to demand a reset of the ticketing system. But real reform shouldn’t mean more central planning. It should mean removing the barriers that have shielded incumbents and stifled innovation.

As OMB Director Russ Vought works with DOJ, FTC, and Treasury on the reform plan the president requested, the right questions to ask are:

• Does the ultimate proposed reform framework eliminate bots and deceptive fees?
• Does it expand choice and allow more competitors to enter?
• Does it allow the most powerful players in the industry to suppress their competition?

If the answer to the third is “yes,” it’s not reform — it’s entrenchment.
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​Fans deserve a fair shot at tickets, and entrepreneurs deserve a fair shot at competing. That’s what a truly free market provides. But we won’t get there by handing Ticketmaster a government-enforced price shield. We’ll only get there by rolling back the government failures that got us into this mess in the first place.

Hopefully, the Trump administration does the right thing.