Congress of the Hnited States ‘Washington, BE 20515 July 28, 2017 ‘The Honorable Maureen K. Olhausen ‘Acting Chairwoman Federal Trade Commission {600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW ‘Washington, D.C, 20530 Dear Acting Chairwoman Ohlhausen, We write to express our concems with certain “white label” and “private label” marketing programs employed within the event ticket resale industry, It has come to our attention that some ticket resale marketplaces use these programs to solicit third party domain parti i ‘an effort to deceive consumers. These programs appear to harm consumers by creating ‘confusion, concealing exorbitant service fees, and discouraging choice, As such, we believe this practice warrants the FTC’s review. In 2014, the FTC setled charges that TicketNetwork and two of ts sales partners allegedly misrepresented to consumers that they were official venues offering tickets at face value. As part ‘of the settlement, TicketNetwork vas barred ftom using this deceptive practice and was required ‘to make clear disclosures that they are resellers, thatthe price may be above face value, and that their website is not owned by the venve, ats, or sports team, In that case, TicketNetwork and its affiliates created deceptively-named domains designed to lead consumers to believe that they ‘were purchasing tickets from the official venue. The webpages themselves were also designed to 'mimic the lok of official websites in order to deceive consumers into thinking they were buying tickets at face value, when in fact the tickets were often being resold at inflated prices with Additional fees for TicketNetwork and its affiliates. ‘We applaud the FTC for taking this action to protect consumers, but it has come to our attention that similar practices are stil being used to deceive consumers inthe wake ofthis settlement, Under this practice known as “white labeling,” ticket reselling companies will grant multiple third party website domains acess to their ticket inventory in-a manner that allows them to ‘manipulate search engine results and deceive consumers. Under this process, a consumer searching for tickets to an event is given the impression that the top paid search results ae ether official box offices or multiple competing companies, when infact they are all ran by the same reseller under different domain names. ‘These programs provide no value to consumers and can be highly deceptive, Many ofthe white label domains also include subdomains that create an impression with consumers thatthe site is directly affliated with the offical box office or venue. For example, a recent search for “Madison Square Garden Tickets” returned atop paid search result for ‘madisonsquaregarden.ticketoffices.com, a white label ste run by a reseller. Similar tothe claims that served asthe basis ofthe 2014 FTC complaint, these sites offer consumers that they are a ticket resale marketplace.‘These “white label programs often are used to impose high, hidden service fees these programs impose on consumers. Infact, multiple icket resellers describe ther programs as enabling third party websites to control ticket markup prices and service fees, allowing the afliliate to ‘determine its own commission, This means that a ticket available on a white label site is often substantially more expensive than the exact same ticker available on the reseller’s main website. Consumers are not well positioned to make that comparison, however, because the service fees ‘on a white label site are typically not disclosed until the end of the checkout flow, which isa point of no return for most consumers. ‘We sce no value for consumers in these practices and encourage the FTC to review them under the authority of Section 5 of the FTC Act. Thank you for your attention to our important request ‘and we look forward to your timely response saree Ee Member of Congress “Member of Congress