Fans deserve a fair shot at face-value tickets. We’re calling for real transparency about how many tickets are actually available to the public and protections against sky-high resale prices.

Fans everywhere are being shut out of live music. When ticket platforms advertise a “general sale,” we expect a fair chance at buying tickets at face value. Instead, huge chunks are siphoned into presales, insider and sponsor holds, VIP bundles, and inflated “Platinum” pricing—leaving almost nothing for the public. In my case, I was 4500 deep in the queue for Ariana Grande tickets and found zero seats left in a 25,000-seat venue. I’m not alone; countless fans report the same experience. Many people who were less than 1000 in the queue as well did not get tickets.

If nothing changes, concerts become luxury events only the wealthy or lucky can attend. Resellers flip tickets for two, five, even ten times face value while platforms profit again on “official” resale. Without transparency, “general sale” looks and feels like deceptive advertising. Without limits, the resale market becomes legalized gouging. Live music should unite us, not exploit us.

Now is the time to act. Other countries in Europe have already moved to protect fans by restricting resale markups. The U.S. should catch up with simple, common-sense rules: tell the truth about public inventory and stop predatory pricing on the secondary market.

We demand:

Ticket-allocation transparency. Before any on-sale, disclose the real numbers: tickets reserved for presales, sponsors/industry holds, VIP/dynamic pricing, and the exact number truly available to the public.
Resale protections. Cap resale prices near face value (or ban above-face resale for designated venues/events), prohibit speculative resale (listing tickets you don’t hold), and stop platforms from profiting twice on the same seat.
Real bot enforcement. Strengthen penalties for bot buying and require platforms to publish audit logs showing how many tickets were actually sold at face value vs. resale.
No self-preferencing & forced lock-ins. If a primary seller runs a resale market, it shouldn’t use tech or policies that lock tickets to its own ecosystem or block fair transfers.
All-in pricing and queue integrity. Show the full price upfront and publish plain-English explanations of how the queue works, including independent verification that “randomization” is real.

What success looks like:

Honest on-sale pages with real public inventory numbers.
Face-value tickets actually reachable in “general sale.”
Resale markups curbed to consumer-protection levels.
Bots and resellers punished, not fans.
Platforms competing on fairness, not opacity.

Add your name if you believe access to live music shouldn’t require a black card or a bot farm.