As announced by the FTC this week, StubHub will pay $10 million to settle the FTC’s charges that the company violated the FTC Act and the Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees by deceptively advertising ticket prices on its website without clearly and conspicuously disclosing, up-front, how much consumers would pay for tickets, including all mandatory fees. The FTC’s action follows a warning letter (including a document hold demand) it had sent to StubHub in May 2025 stating that various prices displayed on StubHub’s website appeared to violate the Rule. 

Under the Rule, which took effect in May of 2025, the total price of a live-event ticket and short-term lodging, including all mandatory fees and charges, must be presented to consumers clearly and conspicuously in any “offer, display, or advertisement that represents any price of a covered good or service.” Failure to comply with the Rule constitutes an unfair and deceptive practice.  In addition, as the complaint against StubHub makes clear, misrepresenting prices violates the FTC Act.

The Complaint alleges that although StubHub  -- the nation’s largest ticket exchange and resale ticker provider  -- publicly supported the Rule, it did not actually comply with it and, in fact, privately planned to violate it, particularly in connection with sales of NFL tickets.  Specifically, the FTC alleged that, seeing the competitive disadvantage of advertising "all-in" prices, StubHub reverted to deceptive price advertising after a brief period of compliance with the Rule.  (This is what the complaint alleges, but the Statement of Chairman Ferguson, in a paen to spectator sports, says that StubHub fixed the problem right away after sending it the warning letter and that the $10 million StubHub must pay is for refund of the fees paid to StubHub for purchases made on its platform just from May 12 through May 14, 2025.) 

The Proposed Order requires the $10 million payment, enjoins misrepresentation of prices generally and enjoins specifically the offer, display and advertisement of any price without clearly and conspicuously (i.e., the more prominently than any other price) displaying the total price. Total price means the maximum total of all fees or charges a consumer must pay for any good(s) or service(s), including the charges for any mandatory extra (or “ancillary”) charges other than taxes (“government charges”) and shipping.  The order also requires StubHub to disclose, prior to the consumer’s consent to pay, “the nature, purpose, and amount” of any fee charged that’s not included in the “total price,” and the final payment the consumer must pay including those additional fees.

Take-aways: 

If you’re in the ticketing or short-term lodging business, get educated on the Rule if you haven’t already. Obvi.  The FTC has published plenty of information about it.  In addition to the Rule itself, and the warning letter to StubHub, there’s the Fees Rule FAQs.  There’s also the Executive Order on Ticketing, which includes a directive for the FTC to “take appropriate action . . . to ensure price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process, including the secondary ticketing market.”  This is clearly a priority area for the current administration.

Even if you’re not in these businesses, be aware that all-in pricing is required by some state laws –- some of which are stricter and more inclusive than the Fees Rule --  and that pricing transparency is likely the direction we’re going in generally. 

Note the order of the FTC’s activities here: rule-making; FAQs; warning letter; press release and Business Blog post…and then an enforcement action.  The agency is not subtle.  If it has a lot to say on a particular subject, whether junk fees, subscriptions, or other consumer protection issue, it’s well worth paying attention.