Lawmakers appear to have no interest in capping ticket fees

The move to cap ticket fees in Massachusetts is losing steam, which is a shame, says Eric Grossman of Waltham.

He recently went on the Ticketmaster website to buy a $30 ticket to see rock band Widespread Panic at the Bank of America Pavilion in July. He was stunned when a screen appeared that indicated the total bill, with fees, would be 65 percent higher, or nearly $50.

"These fees are exorbitant," Grossman said. "How can they get away with advertising something as $30 and then charge $49.55?"

Senator Michael W. Morrissey a Democrat from Quincy and cochairman of the Legislature's Consumer Affairs and Professional Licensure Committee, agrees with Grossman. He filed legislation this year that would cap the fees per ticket at $12, eliminate charges for electronic delivery of tickets, and require venues to report what they are doing with the facility charges they collect.

But it appears there's little appetite within Morrissey's own committee for regulating the fees charged by ticket sellers. At a recent committee hearing on ticket bills, the issue of ticket fees never came up. A representative from Ticketmaster, a division of IAC/InterActive Corp. that dominates the ticket-selling business, didn't even bother to voice opposition to Morrissey's bill in his testimony.

"It doesn't seem to be a burning issue," Morrissey conceded last week. "No one paid any attention to it when they testified."

The House chairman of the Consumer Affairs panel, Representative Michael J. Rodrigues, a Democrat of Westport, said there is little interest in the committee to start regulating ticket prices or fees.

"Many of us on the committee feel that issuing pricing controls is not some place the Legislature ought to be," Rodrigues said. (The committee hearing focused almost entirely on whether the state should amend or scrap the current law on ticket resales, which is rarely enforced and limits markups to $2 above face value, plus certain business and service charges.)

Colman Herman , a Dorchester consumer activist who supports state regulation of ticket resale prices and has sued or filed complaints against resellers on his own, said Morrissey has his priorities wrong. He said the senator was fixated on curbing ticket fees that typically amount to $8 to $15 per ticket but willing to let resellers charge three times the face value.

"That's where the real damage is being done to consumers," Herman said of ticket resale markups amounting to hundreds of dollars.

But consumers like Grossman say relatively few people buy tickets on the resale market and those that do seem willing to pay big markups. By contrast, he said, virtually everyone is affected by the fees assessed on the initial sale of tickets. What's particularly annoying about the fees, Grossman said, is that they seem so arbitrary. "They seem to be different for every event and not just a certain percentage of the ticket price."

Ticketmaster, for example, is assessing a $15.70 convenience charge on the purchase of a $125 ticket to see Stevie Nicks and Chris Isaak in June at the Tweeter Center for the Performing Arts in Mansfield. The convenience charge drops to $9.95 for a $38 ticket to the same concert. That's a drop of $5.75, but as a percentage of the ticket cost, it's actually an increase, rising from 12.5 percent to 26 percent.

On Grossman's ticket for the Widespread Panic concert, the face value was $30, but there was also a $9.70 convenience charge, a $5 facility fee, and a $4.85-per-order processing fee. He chose standard mail delivery to avoid additional charges. The cost of Ticketmaster's e-mail delivery is $2.50 per order, while the cost of United Parcel Service delivery ranges from $14.50 to $25.

Bonnie Poindexter , a spokeswoman for Ticketmaster, said most businesses charge fees for the services they provide. She also noted that fans can usually avoid ticket fees by purchasing tickets at the venue box office.

But that's not always the case. At the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, a $5 convenience charge is assessed on each ticket sold at the box office.

Most venues also tack on facility charges to the tickets they sell. The Tweeter Center is charging a $7 facility fee per ticket for most of its shows, while the Bank of America Pavilion is adding $5 to the cost of each of its tickets. Both venues are owned by Live Nation Inc. of Los Angeles, which could not be reached for comment. Most other venues, with the exception of Gillette Stadium, the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut, and smaller local clubs, charge facility fees of $1 to $3 per ticket.

Facility charges go directly to the venue, while convenience charges are generally split between the ticketing company and the venue. Venue officials say the fees help cover operating costs, including energy and insurance bills.

While most of his other ticket initiatives appear to be attracting little support, Morrissey said he intends to press on for a requirement that venues file statements with the state disclosing how much money they are raising with their facility fees and what the money is being used for.

"I, for one," he said, "want to know where that money is going."

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.