Is Brown Paper Tickets Compliant with California's Fee Transparency Law?

California Senate Bill 478 - Consumers Legal Remedies Act, a.k.a the “Honest Pricing Law,” goes into effect as of July 1, 2024. The law requires that the final price, including any service fees, must be listed up front in any advertising for an event. This includes event listings on ticketing platforms. Other states are likely to enact similar requirements in the future.

You can find out more about the law on this FAQ page from the California Office of the Attorney General. 

Pricing and fee transparency for event attendees is at the core of Brown Paper Tickets’ values, and our longstanding practices reflect this. We continue to display the full ticket price - inclusive of fees - up front so there are no surprises for customers at checkout.

 

Service Fees on Brown Paper Tickets Listings

When you list an event on Brown Paper Tickets, you determine the appropriate pricing for your tickets. Brown Paper Tickets service fees are added onto or included in the prices based on your selection. 

Service fees added: You determine the face value of your ticket and Brown Paper Tickets will automatically add the service fee to be paid by customers.

The full ticket price, including the added service fee, will appear on the listing next to the face value so buyers can see the final price before adding tickets to their cart. 

Service fees included: Brown Paper Tickets offers the option to absorb the ticket buyer's service fee into your price.

You can set a final ticket price based on what you’d like customers to pay, and Brown Paper Tickets will automatically deduct the fee from the ticket face value. Your customers won’t see any added fees.

 

Taxes and Shipping

SB-478 does allow for taxes and shipping fees to be added on later in the checkout process.

Brown Paper Tickets always allows you to provide free ticket delivery options to your attendees. If they select one of the paid expedited shipping options for physical tickets, the price of their selected option will appear in the drop-down menu and will be added to their total once the tickets have been added to the cart.

While you can always choose to absorb the cost of taxes into the price of your tickets, if you do choose to add tax, the amount will be added on and included in the total after tickets have been added to the cart.

 

Listing Prices in Advertising and Marketing Materials

While listings on Brown Paper Tickets will automatically display the full price, we recommend that event organizers include that full ticket price with fees in any advertising or marketing they do outside of Brown Paper Tickets to ensure compliance with price transparency laws. This includes any items such as flyers, posters, social media ads, or event organizer websites that contain pricing information.

Using the option to absorb service fees into the price can be a helpful strategy for keeping pricing to round numbers. This option makes it easy to be consistent across different advertising and marketing materials.

Finding Price Information

You can find the total price for each of your admission levels by checking the event listing for your event. You can access the listing from your Brown Paper Tickets account by selecting the event in Manage Your Events, and then clicking the URL that appears in the top section of the Event Status page. If you’ve chosen to add the service fee onto the price, you’ll see the total for each admission level included in parentheses “w/service fee.”

If you have any questions about the pricing for your event, feel free to contact us any time at support@brownpapertickets.com and we’ll be happy to help.