StubHub settles over pricing

StubHub agreed on April 9 to put up $10 million for customer refunds after the Federal Trade Commission said the site showed ticket prices without the full mandatory fees until late in checkout. The agency said that broke the federal rule that requires the total ticket price to be shown up front. (ftc.gov) The government’s complaint says the missing fees were not a small footnote problem. The Federal Trade Commission says StubHub failed to show the full price in the first three pricing displays on its website, and on the third screen it listed separate charges without giving one total. (ftc.gov) One detail in the case shows why timing matters in ticketing. The agency says StubHub kept using partial prices in mid-May 2025, including during the rush around National Football League schedule week, when fans were shopping for high-demand games after the schedule was announced on May 14, 2025. (ftc.gov) This fight is about what regulators call “drip pricing,” which works like seeing a $120 seat and only learning near the end that the real bill is much higher. The Federal Trade Commission’s rule says a ticket seller can advertise a price only if the total includes all mandatory fees that the buyer has to pay. (ftc.gov) That rule is new enough that many buyers may not know it exists. The Federal Trade Commission finalized the junk-fees rule on December 17, 2024, and the agency says it took effect on May 12, 2025 for live-event tickets and short-term lodging. (ftc.gov 1) (ftc.gov 2) The rule does not ban fees themselves. It bans bait-and-switch presentation, so a platform can still charge a service fee or convenience fee, but it has to show the full required amount early enough for shoppers to compare one seat against another without doing math across multiple checkout pages. (ftc.gov) The Federal Trade Commission built the rule around a simple consumer problem: hidden charges waste time as well as money. When it announced the rule, the agency estimated that clearer up-front pricing would save consumers up to 53 million hours a year and more than $11 billion over a decade in time savings. (ftc.gov) StubHub is not a venue box office setting the original face value of the seat. In its own user agreement, StubHub says it runs a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers, and that the seller, not StubHub, sets the ticket price, which is why the case turns on how the platform displayed that price on the way to checkout. (stubhub.com) The settlement also shows how consumer law now reaches product design choices that used to be treated like ordinary marketing. If the first screen says one number and the last screen says another, regulators are treating that layout choice as a legal risk with real cash attached. (ftc.gov)