President Donald Trump and Kid Rock sign executive order tackling ticket touting
President Donald Trump and Kid Rock appeared together at the Oval Office on March 31st to sign an executive order clamping down on ticket touting.
The White House has described the executive order as a response to “exploitative ticket scalping.” It encourages the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to “rigorously enforce” the laws which are already in place rather than introducing a new set of legal restrictions on the ticketing industry.
At the signing of the executive order, Trump stated that Kid Rock has informed him about “scalping and all of the gouging that you’ve been reading about it… And I didn’t know too much about it, but I checked it out and it is a big problem.”
The politician continued: “You’ve been trying to get this done for 20 years or something; he said ‘Trump got it done in two weeks.’ … I’ve spoken to him over the years about it, and it bothers him… The artists go out with a $100 ticket and it sells for $2,000 the following night.”
Seemingly, the plan is to stop the reselling of tickets for extortionate prices on secondary sites which are often initially purchased through bots rather than introducing limits on how much an artist can charge fans to attend shows.
Kid Rock sees the executive order as the start rather than the end of the line and wants more to be done in this area, explaining, “Ultimately I think this is a great first step. I would love down the road if there would be some legislation where we could actually put a cap on the resale of tickets.”
The musician continued: “I’m a capitalist and a deregulation guy, but they’ve tried this in some places in Europe, and it seems to be the only thing that allows us as artists to get tickets into the hands of fans at the prices we set.”
He also described himself as “overpaid” and admitted the situation for artists in his position is “kind of ridiculous”, before adding, “I would rather be a hero to working-class people and have them be able to come attend my shows and give them a fair ticket price. I can’t control that right now so hopefully this is a step to make that happen.”
The National Consumers League, Stub Hub and Live Nation have both supported the executive order. “Scalpers and bots prevent fans from getting tickets at the prices artists set, and we thank President Trump for taking them head-on,” Live Nation said in a statement. “We support any meaningful resale reforms — including more enforcement of the BOTS act, caps on resale prices, and more.”
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