If you have ever been quoted one price on a listing page and a materially larger price two clicks later, you have experienced the industry-standard fee reveal that resale marketplaces have used for over fifteen years.
How the pattern works
The mechanic is simple. A listing page displays a ticket price. A checkout page adds a service fee, a delivery fee, and often a "processing" fee. Total marked-up costs land in the 25–40% range above the headline number. The industry term for this is "drip pricing": revealing costs progressively across steps rather than at the point of first choice.
Consumer research is consistent about the effect: drip pricing increases conversion. Buyers who have already invested cognitive effort (choosing a seat, entering delivery details) are materially less likely to abandon than buyers presented the same total up front. The pattern isn't accidental.
What regulators are doing
The US Federal Trade Commission's 2024 "junk fee" rulemaking specifically targets drip pricing in live-event ticketing, requiring an all-in price disclosure at the earliest point of consumer choice. The rule took effect in May 2025 for events sold to US buyers. The UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 requires equivalent transparency in the UK market with similar timelines.
The regulatory pressure works only so far. Many marketplaces have complied to the letter — showing a total on a specific page — while maintaining a lower headline number on the listing browse view. The buyer experience has improved marginally; the underlying strategy remains.
What we do instead
Every price you see on Ticketscore, at every stage — listing page, browse view, checkout — is the total you pay. There is no service fee, no processing fee, no back-end mark-up. If the ticket is displayed at £185, £185 is what your card is charged.
This is not a temporary marketing position. It's how the business is structured. We take our margin from a transparent commission built into the displayed price, not from fees layered on afterwards. If the industry standard changes back toward full up-front transparency, we won't need to update anything.
What to check on any site
Regardless of where you buy: before adding a ticket to a cart, click through to at least the second checkout step and confirm the price you were quoted matches the total shown. On sites where the numbers diverge, they always diverge in one direction.