That is getting ridiculous.
Have you ever ever questioned why it’s so arduous to purchase tickets at face worth? The reply typically lies in an unseen monetary engine fueling the ticket resellers: scalper loans and bulk ticket financing for skilled resellers.
It’s really worse than it appears to be like. Latest information highlights a notable pattern towards an rising reliance on financing choices to buy live performance tickets.
In 2025, 60% of Coachella attendees used fee plans to buy tickets, successfully taking out microloans to attend. Between Might 2024 and April 2025, U.S. bank card holders spent a mean of $300/month on dwell occasions. A generational snapshot revealed that Gen Z spent a mean of $2,100 over two years on live performance tickets, with almost 20% admitting they spent greater than they might afford.
Although a precise determine isn’t obtainable, these traits recommend piles of cash, probably billions of {dollars}, are seemingly loaned yearly to followers particularly for concert-related purchases. The intersection of dwell occasions and accessible credit score merchandise has created a shopper spending phenomenon with potential monetary threat implications.
A superb chunk of money includes B2B financing flows into the resale market, permitting brokers to finance ticket hoarding lengthy earlier than real followers can click on “purchase.” These aren’t shopper loans — that is subtle enterprise‑to‑enterprise (B2B)lending tailor-made for the largest resale operators.
Veteran artist supervisor Randy Nichols has identified that TicketNetworok, run by Don Vaccaro, is intently tied to RCN Capital, a actual property lending firm that provides secured and unsecured loans for bulk ticket acquisitions. (See Randy’s remark to DOJ/FTC 👉 Remark ATR‑2025‑0002‑0074).
In the meantime, Anytickets pushes a $40 million line of credit score from Financial institution of America, making it seamless for brokers to fund huge buys–no less than relative to fan shopping for energy. Different financiers, like Crestmont Capital, goal ticket resellers with working capital loans, promising “minimal paperwork” and “adverse credit okay” — offering virtually instantaneous liquidity.
These financing pipelines function like a gasoline injected supercharger — an countless provide of funding for an endlessly rising ticket market. By guaranteeing entry to money inside 24 hours, financiers take away the constraints that may in any other case govern pricing and availability, permitting scalpers to dominate onsales and outbid real followers.
What This Means for Followers
- Scalping has advanced into an institutional, excessive‑finance enterprise.
- Nicely‑financed resellers can snap up tickets immediately, forcing followers to pay extra or miss out.
- The normal dwell leisure expertise — constructed on a social contract between artists and their audiences — is more and more changed by a commodity‑pushed, investor‑backed market.
Options to Contemplate
To revive equity and accessibility to the ticketing market, policymakers and regulators might:
✅ Mandate disclosure of financing relationships: Require ticket resellers and brokers to publicly report traces of credit score, loans, and different financing used to acquire tickets.
✅ Ban speculative tickets and prohibit loans for speculative tickets (as a result of they’ll do it anyway): Ban spec tickets outright, and impose restrictions or caps on loans used for buying tickets that don’t but exist.
✅ Implement the BOTS Act and develop its scope: Strictly implement the BOTS Act and think about extending its penalties to cowl financing practices that allow bot‑pushed or speculative gross sales.
✅ Implement Wire Fraud and RICO Prosecutions: The place relevant.
✅ Create a federal ticket resale registry: Set up a registry for resellers and their financing sources, making it simpler for the DOJ and FTC to identify anticompetitive or fraudulent habits.
✅ Leverage state enforcement: Encourage state attorneys normal to pursue enforcement beneath state shopper safety and unfair commerce follow legal guidelines, utilizing the DOJ and FTC findings as a roadmap.
What You Can Do
If this freaks you out, too, make your voice heard. Proper now, you’ll be able to submit a remark to the DOJ and FTC, deadline July 7.
