NIVA, NITO Rally Around Vanderbilt’s $11B Anti-Resale Research as Methodology Raises Questions

A Vanderbilt University white paper estimating that ticket resale markups and platform fees cost American consumers $11.3 billion annually has quickly become new ammunition for live-entertainment groups seeking government limits on ticket resale prices.

The National Independent Venue Association declared the research the “most convincing evidence we’ve seen” supporting resale price controls on the same day it was released. The National Independent Talent Organization similarly promoted the findings, telling Digital Music News that the research showed resale was costing fans billions of dollars. Both organizations have spent years advocating ticketing legislation that would give promoters, artists and venues the power to regulate the independent resale market and, increasingly, limit resale prices to or near a ticket’s original price.

But a closer examination of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator paper, titled “How to Save Audiences $11 Billion on Live Events,” shows that the headline number is not drawn from a new national dataset measuring current ticket transactions.

Instead, Vanderbilt acknowledges that definitive estimates are unavailable and says it must “patch together data from various sources” to calculate the $4.5 billion it attributes to resale markups. Those sources include concert resale data from 2004, broker transactions from 2010 through 2014 and a NITO study whose underlying data TicketNews previously sought unsuccessfully for independent review.

The other $6.8 billion comes from Vanderbilt’s estimate of supposedly excessive ticketing fees. That figure rests on a separate series of assumptions, including that a 20% average platform fee is representative of the current market and that any portion above 10% can be considered unnecessary because ticketing platforms continue operating in jurisdictions with 10% fee limitations.

Vanderbilt does not hide that the calculations have limitations. And when TicketNews asked the Policy Accelerator about those limitations, Vanderbilt emphasized that the dollar estimate is ultimately secondary to the paper’s policy argument.

“The paper provides the best possible estimate given limitations in the available data, which are acknowledged in the paper,” Vanderbilt told TicketNews in a statement.

“Importantly, the paper’s main thesis is the policy and legal justification for prohibiting ticket resale above face value and for capping platform fees,” the statement continued, arguing those policies would reduce costs without producing many of the consequences cited by opponents.

As Fix The Tix coalition and its constituent member groups and aligned businesses shop the survey and its findings to media outlets and legislators, the policy-first agenda of the paper is important context. The document is expressly a white paper advocating a particular regulatory outcome, complete with model legislative language and a proposed legal framework for the Federal Trade Commission and state regulators to impose restrictions. Vanderbilt describes the Policy Accelerator itself as an organization intended to move research and policy proposals rapidly from development toward implementation.

Resale Estimate Leans on Data Going Back Two Decades

Vanderbilt arrives at its $4.5 billion resale estimate by starting with StubHub’s own assessment that the North American secondary ticket market was worth approximately $18 billion in 2024, notably a period when the company was seeking to motivate investors in its planned IPO.

After estimating the portion attributable to marketplace fees, Vanderbilt applies average resale markups ranging from 41% to 49% to the remaining ticket value.

The age of those benchmarks is notable.

The 41% figure comes from research by economists Phillip Leslie and Alan Sorensen based on 56 major rock concerts held during the summer of 2004. The authors themselves said their sample was not intended to represent the thousands of concerts occurring that year and focused instead on major artists with particularly active resale markets.

The 49% benchmark comes from a New York attorney general investigation that reviewed approximately 90,000 transactions by six brokers conducted from 2010 through 2014.

The Government Accountability Office reviewed both studies in its own 2018 investigation of the ticket marketplace. Even then, GAO cautioned that existing research produced widely varying results because of differing methodologies and limited information and specifically warned that the available data were already “several years old” and would not fully reflect the current market.

Eight years later, Vanderbilt uses those studies to help estimate the present-day nationwide cost of resale.

Vanderbilt also starts from StubHub’s estimate of an $18 billion North American secondary market before describing the resulting $4.5 billion calculation as a cost imposed on U.S. consumers. TicketNews asked Vanderbilt whether the calculation included an adjustment to remove Canadian or other non-U.S. transactions but did not receive an answer to that specific question.

The Policy Accelerator likewise did not separately address questions from TicketNews about why the older markup data remained representative of the current market or whether more recent transaction-level datasets were considered.

NITO Study Returns as Supporting Evidence

Vanderbilt argues that its $4.5 billion calculation may actually be conservative by pointing to a supposedly more recent NITO analysis that found substantially greater resale markups.

That introduces another layer to the policy feedback loop.

Vanderbilt cites a 2024 NITO document reporting results from 65 shows by artists represented by NITO members, including an average face-value ticket price of $67.47 and an average resale price of $129.22. The document says ticket buyers paid an average of 203% of face value on the secondary market.

Those core findings are not new.

TicketNews received and covered essentially the same 65-show NITO study in July 2023, with the same $67.47 face-value average, $129.22 resale average and $41,000 estimated reseller profit per show. The original document supplied to TicketNews carried an embargo date of July 11, 2023. The version now hosted by NITO under a 2024 URL reproduces those same core findings.

At the time, NITO told TicketNews that face-value information was generated from artists represented by its members and that resale information came from a website used by professional resellers to track secondary-market sales.

NITO declined TicketNews’ requests for more information identifying that source or for the underlying data necessary to independently analyze the study.

TicketNews asked Vanderbilt whether its researchers had subsequently obtained and reviewed NITO’s underlying event-level data before using the study as corroboration for the white paper. Vanderbilt’s response did not address that question.

NITO is not a disinterested source in the resale-policy debate. Its own study identifies the organization as a member of the NIVA-led Fix The Tix coalition and calls for policies allowing artists and venues to determine terms and conditions governing resale.

Now Vanderbilt cites NITO’s analysis as evidence supporting a resale cap, while NITO is in turn promoting the Vanderbilt paper as evidence supporting the same policy.

Half of Estimated Fees Declared ‘Excess’

The larger portion of Vanderbilt’s $11.3 billion headline figure does not come from resale markups at all.

The paper estimates that Americans spend $13.6 billion annually on primary and secondary ticket-platform service fees and labels $6.8 billion of that amount excessive.

To estimate the fee rate, Vanderbilt draws partly on GAO research published in 2018 using a sample GAO itself described as nongeneralizable, with transaction data collected between October and December 2017. Vanderbilt also references more recent allegations about Ticketmaster fees and a New York attorney general study before selecting 20% as what it calls a conservative average.

It then effectively divides the $13.6 billion in half.

The rationale is that platforms continue operating in Maine and Rhode Island despite 10% fee restrictions. Vanderbilt therefore reasons that 10% must be sufficient to recoup costs and earn a profit and says revenue above that level can be presumed to constitute an unnecessary excess cost.

That means the $6.8 billion figure is not an independently measured amount of unnecessary operating expense or profit. It is the result of applying Vanderbilt’s chosen 10% policy benchmark to its estimate of nationwide ticketing fees.

TicketNews asked Vanderbilt how researchers determined that 10% was an appropriate national benchmark and whether differences in ticketing business models or operating costs were considered. Vanderbilt did not respond to those questions individually.

The paper’s acknowledgments identify three people thanked for providing feedback but do not include a project-specific funding disclosure. TicketNews also asked whether NIVA, NITO, ticketing businesses, promoters, venues or other organizations with an interest in ticketing policy provided funding, data, methodological feedback or advance review of the paper. Vanderbilt’s statement did not address that question.

That does not establish that any such industry participation occurred. It leaves the question unanswered.

An $11 Billion Number Enters an Existing Political Fight

None of those limitations establishes that ticket resale markups or ticketing fees are insignificant, nor does aging data by itself demonstrate that Vanderbilt’s estimate is wrong.

Consumers routinely encounter tickets offered above their initial price, just as they encounter substantial service fees throughout both the primary and secondary ticket markets. GAO, regulators and industry participants have documented both issues for years.

What the limitations do establish is that the $11.3 billion figure carries substantially more estimation and policy judgment than some of the early coverage and advocacy surrounding the report has suggested.

NIVA did not characterize the number cautiously when it released its statement Aug. 25.

“Vanderbilt has given Congress, governors, state legislators, and attorneys general the most convincing evidence we’ve seen,” Executive Director Stephen Parker said while urging regulation restricting ticket resale to the original price or less.

NITO Executive Director Nathaniel Marro similarly told Digital Music News that “the facts are clear as day,” while pointing back to NITO’s own research included in Vanderbilt’s analysis.

The reception comes amid an increasingly organized fight over resale price controls. NIVA and Fix The Tix have promoted model ticketing legislation nationally, while Live Nation has separately supported resale-price restrictions in its massive lobbying campaigns across both state and federal level. Consumer groups, ticket resale marketplaces and professional sellers have pushed back, arguing that price ceilings reduce competition, restrict consumers’ ability to recover the market value of tickets they own and can push high-demand sales toward less-regulated channels.

Vanderbilt’s paper lands squarely within that debate rather than above it.

Its author makes no claim otherwise. The paper proposes banning above-face-value resale, capping platform fees at 10%, supplies model legislation to accomplish those objectives and argues regulators may already possess authority to impose them. Vanderbilt has now told TicketNews that making that legal and policy case — not producing a definitive accounting of the contemporary ticket market — is the paper’s “main thesis.”

As lawmakers encounter the $11.3 billion figure in the months ahead, that distinction may be as important as the number itself.