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After U.K. artist Olivia Dean called out ticketing companies for allowing high-priced resales of tickets to her upcoming shows, Live Nation and Ticketmaster say they are capping resale prices and will partially refund some fans.
Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation said Wednesday they would be imposing Face Value Exchange (FVE) on tickets for Dean’s upcoming The Art of Loving Live tour, which means ticketholders won’t be able to sell tickets for anything higher than the amount they bought them for originally.
Fans who already bought resale tickets on Ticketmaster will also be partially refunded for the difference between the higher price they paid and the face value of the ticket, the company said. It’s a novel response to ongoing backlash, one industry expert said.
“Ticketmaster does not receive the markup on those tickets but is stepping in to absorb this refund cost for fans,” the company said in a statement.
Dean took to Instagram last week to voice her frustration with pricey resale tickets for her 2026 tour.
She told fans that there appeared to be an issue with “ticket reselling and pricing” and that her team was looking into it, before going on to call out Ticketmaster, Live Nation and AEG Presents directly.
“You are providing a disgusting service,” Dean wrote on Instagram in a now-expired post tagging Ticketmaster and Live Nation, according to Variety. “The prices at which you’re allowing tickets to be re-sold is vile and completely against our wishes. Live music should be affordable and accessible and we need to find a new way of making that possible. BE BETTER.”
Live Nation announced the sale cap and refunds yesterday, saying they were aligned with Dean’s philosophy. The change also followed a previous pricing issue with some presale tickets for Dean’s shows, which saw tickets listed for more than $700 rather than the $53.45 they were supposed to be selling for. The company chalked the issue up to a “typo,” and said folks who bought tickets for incorrect prices would be refunded automatically.
Proposed new laws in the U.K. would ban the resale of a ticket above face value. Advocates say it will level the playing field for fans, but resale companies say the move will fuel black markets.
“We share Olivia’s desire to keep live music accessible and ensure fans have the best access to affordable tickets,” said Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, in the company’s statement. “While we can’t require other marketplaces to honor artists’ resale preferences, we echo Olivia’s call to ‘Do Better’ and have taken steps to lead by example.”
Live Nation also said that demand — from real fans, not from resellers — was high for the concerts. After reviewing the ticket sales, Live Nation says less than 20 per cent of tickets were later listed for resale, indicating that “genuine fans” were the ones buying the majority of the tickets.
Catherine Moore, a professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in the music business and has expertise on the secondary ticket market, says Ticketmaster’s public response to backlash over ticket prices, and their choice to refund the difference concertgoers paid, is something she hasn’t seen before.
“Ticketmaster is getting a lot of scrutiny now from ticket-buyers, government regulators, and music artists. As a company, they are now faced with deciding whether or not the increased revenue they get through operating in the secondary-ticket market offsets the reputational harm,” Moore said.
Ticketmaster allows artists to opt into the Face Value Exchange program as a way to “minimize scalping and get tickets to fans at the price they set.” Artists like Oasis have used it in the past, pricing tickets between $104 to $430 for their Canadian dates, as have others like Billie Eilish, Hozier, Ethel Cain and Neil Young.
Dean said Ticketmaster and AXS agreed to cap sales and refund the difference following conversations with her team.
“Every artist and their team should be granted the option to cap re-sale at face value ahead of on sale, to keep the live music space accessible for all,” Dean said in an Instagram post.
CBC News reached out to Ticketmaster and Live Nation for further clarification about why FVE was brought in only after tickets went on sale, but Ticketmaster was unable to provide any details beyond those in their previous press release.
The debacle comes as Ticketmaster and similar ticketing sites have come under scrutiny for allowing resellers to list tickets for much higher prices at the expense of genuine fans, while the companies get to make extra cash by selling the same ticket twice. Ticketmaster itself has vowed to crack down on scalper accounts, after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit in September accusing Ticketmaster and Live Nation of “illegal ticket resale tactics.”
Governments have also been trying to better regulate the resale space — the U.K. government proposed legislation last week that would make it illegal to resell tickets for concerts, sports games or other events for more than they were originally purchased.
