Transparent pricing is back in the spotlight- if you’re concerned about your organisation’s compliancy as a result, here's an overview of what the rules ask for, as well as an overview of the two tools available within Ticketsolve to ensure that showing the full ticket price up front is straightforward.
If you've followed ticketing news lately, you'll have seen transparent pricing back in the headlines. Surprise fees that only appear at checkout have drawn plenty of attention, and showing customers the full price of purchase from the start has gone from good practice to a legal requirement for venues in the UK.
Ticketsolve offers two features applicable to your customer-facing site, so getting the displayed price right is straightforward. Some venues will use one, some both, depending on whether you charge per-ticket fees, per-cart fees or a combination. Here's what the rules ask for, and what each tool does.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) guidance on price transparency under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into effect in November 2025. It applies to anyone selling, advertising or promoting a product to customers at any point in the journey, from early-stage marketing through to checkout. Two principles matter most for venues.
First, you must show the total price up front, including any unavoidable fees, from a customer's first interaction with a show. Second, don't drip-feed costs, so mandatory fees, taxes or other charges can't appear later in the purchase without the customer seeing them from the start.
If you need confirmation as to how the rules apply to your own setup, we recommend getting legal advice. Just a reminder, also, that you must apply the guidance across your wider website, advertising and messaging.
This is how the guidance works specifically for ticketing & ticket fees:
Ticketsolve's tools, detailed below, map onto that split: one wraps per-ticket fees in, the other shows per-cart fees clearly.
The account-level setting, hide_all_per_ticket_fees_and_charges, wraps all per-ticket booking fees and visible booking charges into the displayed ticket price across your Ticketsolve site. Hidden booking charges are already wrapped in.
It's opt-in, so nothing changes until you enable it, and it's account-level only, which means it covers all your subdomains and can't be set per subdomain, show or event. It also only changes how prices display to customers online. Booking fees and charges are still calculated, recorded and reported exactly as before, so your sales reports, financial reconciliation and accounting are unaffected, and the Box Office view stays the same.
Per-cart fees need a different approach, because they can't be neatly folded into a per-ticket price. When an order is subject to a per-cart booking fee, a fixed message appears above the ticket prices on event pages and at the top of regular and benefit product pages. Donation products are not affected. It reads 'Additional €/£X booking fee applies per order', with the value pulled from your per-cart fee setting. The message can't be edited or removed, and it sits separately from the customisable existing booking_fee_note.
So customers never see different prices in different places, it's worth working through a few steps before you switch the setting on. Review your messaging around booking fees and charges first, including the booking_fee_note setting and your Public Website Terms and Conditions. Then review the ticket price listings on your own website, and any event advertisements. Once those line up, enable the setting from Settings > General Settings. Our help centre article walks through each step.
With the setting enabled, online customers see fees wrapped into the ticket price, while your Box Office team still sees the underlying price with fees listed separately. The totals match, so there’s no disconnect, but it’s worth briefing your staff on the changes so that they know the correct price to tell customers, and so that your communications on pricing are consistent across all channels.
If you're already with Ticketsolve, our help centre article has everything you need to review your pricing and enable the setting, and the support team can help if you've a large programme to work through.
If you're not yet using Ticketsolve and want to see how we handle pricing, fees and reporting across a varied programme, we'd be happy to show you around.