Event tickets: £3.25 to download your e-tickets and other sneaky fees that will wind you up

Ticketing sites – such as AXS, Eventim, See Tickets and Ticketmaster – charge a bizarre array of fees, driving up the (already pricey) cost of gig tickets.

These fees, also known as ‘drip pricing’, are often only presented in full at the checkout page, where you might be given just a few minutes to enter your details and secure your tickets.

Here, we look at how ticketing fees work, the sites with the sneakiest fees and a proposed drip pricing ban that could come into force this spring.

'I considered not buying the tickets'

Bhavneeta was looking to buy two tickets to BST Hyde Park’s Kylie event, taking place this July.

Although the face value cost of the tickets was £89.95 each, the total cost of her order was more than £200.

She said: ‘I was shocked to see an additional £25.40 in service and order processing fees had been added to the face value price. There was no clear explanation as to what the fees were for.'

Bhavneeta considered not going through with her order, telling us: 'I got to the final basket and considered not going ahead with it, but I really wanted the tickets so had to just pay it in the end.'

While additional ticket fees are nothing new, the cost of gig and festival tickets have soared in recent years, making these extra charges even harder to stomach.

Two thirds of UK adults feel that music festivals are becoming too expensive, according to an Opinium survey this year, while three fifths believe that there should be a cap on how much music festivals can charge per person.

Sneaky fees exposed

Which? looked at fees charged by the biggest ticketing sites and found that, typically, they add on around 20% extra to the face value cost of a ticket – although, charges can be lower or even sometimes higher than this.

Where different ticket sites sold tickets for the same event, there wasn’t a significant difference in fees or overall prices between companies. But you could save yourself a few pounds by shopping around and finding the best price.

Confusingly, even when sites sell tickets for the same event, there’s often little consistency with how fees are charged. 

We took a look at prices across a few sites for an Anne Marie show last year. Both Eventim and Ticketmaster listed a venue or facility fee, while See Tickets didn’t appear to.

Checkout experience

Frustratingly, you’ll often only be shown an overall price for tickets, with a full rundown of fees, at the end of the checkout journey.

Most ticket sites do include some fees in the upfront price and often warn you that further charges will be added, but you’ll often only see the full price (with all fees listed) at the final checkout page.

Dice is the only ticketing site we found that includes all fees in the upfront cost.

Eventim told us all mandatory fees are mentioned on page one of the booking process and nothing is added that the customer wasn't made aware of from the start.

Ticketing companies will often also use a countdown timer on the final checkout page, giving you a set amount of time to complete your transaction. Ticketmaster had the shortest countdown we found, giving you just over three minutes to consider all the additional fees before the payment page. Most other sites gave around 10 minutes.

Ticketmaster gives customers 10-12 minutes in total from when they select tickets, with at least three minutes on the checkout page. ​​Its countdown timer prevents bots from holding onto tickets during ticket sales.

A lack of consistency with how these fees are presented makes it hard for you to comparison-shop, while a countdown timer can leave you feeling ambushed into accepting a long list of fees at the last stage of the payment journey.

If you do want to find the cheapest overall price, you’ll have the onerous task of completing the checkout journey on every site selling tickets for your event to compare prices.

• Read more: how to get a refund from a ticket seller.

Pay to print

Some sites even charge you for e-tickets, which you then download on your phone or print at home.

We looked at every company belonging to The Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers (STAR) – the ticketing regulatory body – and found seven examples of e-ticket or digital ticket fees.

You could find yourself paying anything from 50p to £3.25 to print or download your tickets with the below companies. And with original printer ink costing more per millimetre than Dom Perignon champagne, you might think twice before buying your tickets with these sites.

We asked these ticket platforms what these fees go towards.

TicketWeb's e-ticket fee makes up the order processing fee.

Eventim said that e-tickets carry real costs due to the technology and staff deployed at events to ensure smooth access control.

On the See Tickets website, it states that this fee (also labelled as a 'transaction fee') may apply to both print at home and e-tickets to cover the cost of deploying technology and/or staff to the venue site.

New rules to ban 'drip pricing'

But as a result of Which? campaigning, new rules proposed under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Bill, should make positive changes.

In a bid to ban drip pricing practices, all ticketing sites will soon have to include any mandatory fees in the upfront price of tickets.

These changes should make it easier for you to compare between sites, as well as incentivising ticketing sites to make prices competitive.

The legislation mirrors some of the success achieved by the US consumer champion, Consumer Reports, in its work to improve the transparency of ticket sales in the US. The Biden administration banned 'junk fees', similarly enforcing all ticketing sites to show the upfront price of a ticket early on in the shopping journey. New York State went even further, outlawing fees for print at home and e-tickets back in 2022.

We contacted the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), which confirmed that if e-ticket fees are mandatory, they will need to be shown in the upfront price of a ticket. It's not, however, currently looking to ban e-ticket or print at home fees.

If sites fail to comply with the new rules once they’ve come into force, they could face penalties from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of up to 10% of their global revenue for breaching consumer law.

• Find out more: new rules proposed to ban drip pricing.

Where do your fees go?

We asked the biggest ticketing sites to explain what their fees are for.

AXS told us that its service fees go towards covering the costs involved in running its business and allowing customers to purchase tickets online, as well as the support of bot protection, new technology and staffing. Facility fees, it says, are determined and passed directly on to its clients. It told us being transparent about fees is important and all information on fees can be found on its website.

Dice said that most shows on its platform include a booking fee which is split between Dice and the artists. If the shows on its platform do have fees (many don't, it said) it works hard to keep them low and they're typically much lower than what's out there.

Eventim said that the booking fee is set by the client (for example, the concert promoter) and the venue levy is set by the venue. Eventim sets the fulfilment fee (which covers the cost of delivering tickets to customers and fulfilling orders at the event) and processing fees (which covers the cost of running their website, customer services and marketing). Both these fees are charged per order, not per ticket. 

See Tickets didn't respond to our request, but its website explains that they charge a £1 order processing fee and a £1.50 fulfilment fee for every order. It says its booking fee covers the cost of providing 'a seven days a week, 24 hours a day booking service, labour costs, credit card commissions and all other costs associated with running our business'.

Ticketmaster said that fees are typically set by and shared with its clients. With live performance now the main source of income for artists, more of the ticket's price is going directly to them which is why fees are crucial to the parties behind the scenes, it says. Ticketmaster supports legislation that requires all-in pricing across the industry.