Ticket fees today often feel like an empty tax to fans. We’ve all felt the frustration of adding concert or festival tickets to our cart, only to experience a pile-on of fees at the end of the checkout. The fees are ambiguous, at best, and don’t seem at all connected to the underlying cost – looking at you, facility charges and handling fees!
The frustration has officially boiled over: online ticket resale platform StubHub is embroiled in a high-profile lawsuit, standing accused of a “convoluted junk fee scheme” that allegedly deceives customers and exploits their trust.
It would be easy to say "eliminate all fees," but the reality is that most event producers rely on fees to offset costs beyond the ticket’s base price. Fee revenue also serves as one of the major ways event creators pay for their ticketing provider, making it a sunk cost of doing business. However, the practice of adding vague, inexplicable fees can be detrimental to an event’s success, as they reduce an event creator's earning potential by diminishing fans' spending power. Just think about it: that’s money that could be spent on merchandise, food, or even another ticket.
That’s why Lyte has always been committed to tying the value of a fee directly back to an event creator or fan experience benefit. Some of our most exciting innovations, including returnable tickets, pre-registration access, and payment plans, are all offered in exchange for a related and reasonable fee.
But for a fan, in most cases, all fees can look the same. And sentiment right now around fees is so low because there is no linkage between fees and what someone gets in return. It should be simple: Give fans value for the fees—and be transparent about what that value is—or don’t charge the fees at all.
Other industries that incorporate fees have figured out that customer satisfaction is tied to perceived value of the fees. Airlines are seeing demand for premium seating outpace that of main cabin economy seating. Airbnb guests accepted their fees as payment for accessibility and convenience, but as these fees grew, so did consumer dissatisfaction. That backlash has resulted in corrective actions from Airbnb to try to rein in fees.
Concert goers haven’t been able to exert that same pressure on the largest ticketing companies, where fees long ago stopped being about cost offsets and became more about profit padding. Broadly, this can be seen in the price discrepancy between attending events in the U.S. and attending events abroad. Narrowly, this can be seen in payment processing fees, which are not expensive or difficult. Fans begrudgingly pay the fees, but I suspect that many fans opt out of live events because of the uncertainty and unfairness of last minute fees.
There are signs that change is happening, including bi-partisan support for corrective legislation like Fix the Tix and the Junk Fee Prevention Act. But I’m not talking about all-in pricing; that’s a broad-stroke transparency improvement—it still doesn’t ensure that fees actually represent something a fan values.
Fees should function as a conduit for a clear and necessary value exchange for fans—anything beyond that erodes creator revenue potential and attendee spending power. Given our role in the fan experience, ticketers are in an ideal position to transform how we communicate the value of a fee. Ultimately, the path forward involves a fundamental shift in mindset, charging only what's necessary in exchange for real and tangible consumer benefits.