With his upcoming Freedom 250 Tour, Kid Rock says he’s struck a new kind of deal with Live Nation/Ticketmaster, the same corporate giant he’s been railing against in interviews, on social media, and now, in the halls of government. For a guy who built a career on middle fingers and bombast, this is a fight that seems tailor-made.
Rock has been hammering away at what he calls the “fiasco” of modern ticket buying for a while now: bots scooping up seats in seconds, scalpers flipping them at obscene markups, and fans stuck paying bloated service fees that balloon a $75 ticket into a $140 checkout surprise. Back in December 2024, he took that frustration straight to Washington, meeting with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to help sketch out what would become the Trump administration’s approach to cracking down on ticketing abuses.
At the time, Rock didn’t mince words. He vowed to “open a can” on everyone he felt was complicit, bots, brokers, venues, ticketing companies, managers, even artists themselves, accusing the entire ecosystem of deceiving fans for decades.
By March 2025, that rhetoric had landed him in the Oval Office, standing alongside longtime ally President Donald J. Trump as a new executive order was signed. The order called for a formal investigation into price gouging and the murky lack of transparency that plagues the ticket-buying process from start to finish.
By September, the Federal Trade Commission had filed suit against Live Nation/Ticketmaster. The complaint alleged deceptive pricing practices and claimed the company profited heavily from tickets illegally obtained by brokers, a system that regulators argue has cost fans billions in inflated prices and junk fees.
Rock, unsurprisingly, celebrated the move in typically unfiltered fashion on social media.
“What [Trump] did was he ordered the FTC & the Department of Justice to go investigate and see what the hell is going on with ticketing. Well, guess what? They investigated and what happened? They filed a f*cking lawsuit against Ticketmaster, because clearly they found out that those motherf*ckers are crooks, and they’ve been crooks for decades. F*cking over the public. F*cking over artists.”
Last month, Rock took his crusade to Capitol Hill, testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee during a hearing focused on concert ticket fees. His message there was more structured, but no less pointed.
“I would employ Congress to subpoena the contracts and deals between the artists / promoters / buildings / ticketing companies/ agencies and vendors because as I understand it, you will find mountains of fraud and abuse.
My position and solutions are as follows:
1: Artists should control who sells their tickets and HOW.
2: Resale ticket price caps work and protect real fans.
3: The Bots Act should be enforced, brokers and bad actors must be stopped and all should face serious penalties and consequences
All-in pricing is great but it doesn’t fix the system. Outlawing speculative ticketing is obvious. The problem is that ticketing lobbyists push these reforms as cover—while fighting to keep tickets in an ‘open market’ that lets them exploit fans under the guise of capitalism. Don’t be fooled by these tactics.”
He urged Congress to subpoena contracts between artists, promoters, venues, ticketing companies, and agencies, arguing that a closer look would reveal widespread fraud and abuse.
Whether you see him as a culture-war lightning rod or a loudmouth tilting at windmills, Kid Rock has clearly decided this is his hill to die on. And as his new tour gears up under a fresh arrangement with the very company he’s criticized, the next chapter in this long-running ticketing saga is about to play out in real time.
What do you think?
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