Two of the most popular summer tours, Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour and Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, have sparked a national debate about how online marketplaces and ticket resellers exploit die-hard fans looking to have fun. Now, the American IRS promises to tighten its control over scalpers who resold tickets to major concerts and sporting events and made over $600 this year.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, a new law requires ticket-selling companies like Ticketmaster and Stubhub to provide information on anyone who earned more than $600 reselling tickets this year.
Previously, ticket sales websites had to send 1099-K forms to users who earned more than $20,000 through 200 or more transactions in a year. The updated law, which is part of the American Rescue Plan Act, lowers this threshold to $600, regardless of the number of sales, and sellers will only need to pay taxes on their profit.
“Payment apps and online marketplaces are required to send a 1099-K Form if gross payments to users for goods and services exceed $600,” says the IRS in an informational pamphlet.
In the report, WSJ states that the average ticket price for Swift’s The Eras Tour was $1,095, citing figures from StubHub, which specializes in ticket resale. Similarly, the average prices for Beyoncé and Harry Styles’ tours reached $380 and $400, respectively.
But concerts are not the only source of income for resellers. Tickets for Inter Miami CF soccer games increased from $30 to $250 after Lionel Messi joined Major League Soccer.
StubHub told WSJ that there was an unusually high number of resellers this year, likely a result of the live events industry recovering after the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
The Eras Tour was an event that helped bring to light some significant issues with ticket sales. During the tour’s presale last fall, thousands of users reported disruptions on Ticketmaster’s website while trying to buy tickets. When the “Swifties” finally managed to log in, they found that tickets were being resold at extremely high prices.
Taylor Swift responded with discontent on Instagram, stating: “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we made sure they could.”
Ticketmaster eventually blamed bots (a type of robot, computer program) during a federal hearing for the disastrous presale, while the company subsequently halted ticket sales in France for The Eras Tour under circumstances similar to those that occurred during the presale in the U.S.
Source: The Wall Street Journal