In April, The Racine Theatre Guild saw online ticket prices for their popular show “Legally Blonde: The Musical” jump from $22 to $635.
But the nonprofit never authorized the price hike they saw on Stubhub, an online ticket reselling platform. The increase was due to an online reseller, trying to make a hefty profit off the guild’s show.
“That hurts our reputation as an affordable space to bring your family,” Joycelyn Fish, director of marketing and development at the Racine Theatre Guild, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
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The worst part, Fish said, if customers would go to the guild’s website directly they would have paid that $22 price tag.
“They’re stumbling upon these websites that they might not have the media literacy to understand that they’re not our website,” she said.
But recently introduced legislation would make some actions resulting in those price hikes illegal in the state. Days before the release of Taylor Swift’s newest album, three Wisconsin Democrats proposed legislation to eliminate surprise ticket prices.
The bill is known as SWIFTIE, or “Stop Wildly Inflated Fees and Ticketing Industry Exploitation.”
It would require ticket resellers to disclose the total cost of ticket prices to potential buyers, put a cap on how much resellers can charge for tickets and prohibit ticket-buying bots that resellers use.
“People feel like they’re getting ripped off by scalpers when it comes to going to concerts. And something needs to be done,” Rep. Jill Billings, D-La Crosse, one of the bill’s co-authors said.
The average concert ticket price for the top 100 touring artists in 2024 was $136.45, according to Pollstar, a music industry trade publication. That’s up from $96.17 in 2019.
Similar legislation has been introduced in other states like New York, Michigan and Minnesota.
Fish said none of the money made off reselling tickets goes to the venues nor the artist. And independent performers have little control over the price of a ticket. She urged people to avoid paying suspiciously high resale prices, especially for events at local venues.
“As a nonprofit community theater, all of the money that comes to the door goes right back to our programming, goes right back into supporting the arts in our community. So we want to keep doing that,” Fish said.
