Spain's National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) issued its report on the draft Sustainable Consumption Act this past February. Tucked inside is a new regime for dynamic pricing that lands squarely on anyone selling tickets through an automated pricing engine.
That regime wasn't in the draft the Ministry put out for public consultation. And it surfaces after the EU timetable the law was meant to meet has already expired.
The report carries the reference IPN/CNMC/053/25, and it's worth pinning down its date, because three different dates circulate for it. The Ministry requested the opinion at the end of 2025: the request "was received by the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) on 26 December 2025". The document is dated "Madrid, 6 February 2026", and it was adopted by the regulator's Plenary, chaired by Cani Fernández Vicién — "the PLENARY agrees to issue this report" — not by one of its chambers. The PDF's metadata shows 9 February, which is when the file was generated. And 11 March is the date of the press release, in other words, when it was made public. The report's actual date is 6 February 2026.
Coverage of the report has come from legal and consumer-affairs circles: law firms, consumer associations, specialist bulletins. We haven't found any coverage in the music press.
What happened
The CNMC report devotes its own section to the matter, titled "Section 3.2.3: Dynamic pricing systems (Articles 20, 59 bis, 97 TRLGDCU and Article 27 LCD)". Four provisions, four linked pieces.
A definition. The new Article 59 bis.3.e) of the consolidated General Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users defines dynamic pricing as a "price whose amount is set or changed automatically and in real time based on external, objective variables unrelated to the individual consumer, such as supply and demand conditions, availability of the good or service, market costs, timing of purchase or comparable factors; provided that such variations are not based on the consumer's profile, personal characteristics or individual behaviour".
A rule for personalised pricing. Article 97.1.f) is rewritten in full, and its first block isn't about dynamic pricing at all — it's about personalised pricing. It requires disclosure, "where applicable, that the price has been personalised on the basis of automated decision-making, which must remain unchanged throughout the entire purchase process, together with the parameters taken into account to carry out that personalisation". It closes with a substantive limit: those parameters "may under no circumstances be discriminatory or exploit situations of urgency or need". Two obligations that have barely been reported: publishing the criteria, and freezing the price for the whole purchase.
A disclosure obligation on the price curve. The second block of the same article is the one that hits tickets directly. When goods or services "delivered or provided on a specific date" — the exact definition of a ticket — are sold using dynamic pricing, sellers must disclose that they use the system, "together with the minimum and maximum price at which it will be offered and its full evolution over time from the start of marketing until the date of delivery or provision". Outside that range, only downward promotions or discounts are allowed. And "once the purchase process has begun, the price may not be changed at any point for that purchase".
A penalty. Article 27.10 of the Unfair Competition Act would classify as unfair, on grounds of being misleading, any practice that uses a dynamic pricing system for goods or services tied to a specific date "without previously informing the consumer of the use of that system for the same product on the same date". That clause matters more than it looks: disclosure is required product by product and date by date. A general clause in the terms and conditions won't do.
The CNMC isn't applauding. It asks that the regulation "preserve the flexibility inherent to these systems as a competitive tool" and that it avoid turning into "mechanisms for controlling or predetermining prices, or restricting legitimate commercial strategies".
Its most practical objection is the vagueness of what must be published: the wording "does not sufficiently specify what this information must consist of, leaving excessive uncertainty over its content, scope and form". And it proposes a concrete fix: "it could be specified that information about the price must refer to the variables that cause it to rise or fall". Disclose the mechanism, not just the range.
On turning that into an automatic unfair practice, the report warns in a footnote that it "may entail an economic intrusion that is not fully justified, particularly when there is no material deception involved, but merely a particular pricing technique". Its closing recommendation: strengthen "the transparency of the mechanism and legal certainty for operators" by clearly delimiting the disclosure obligations "and avoiding excessively open-ended concepts".
Where these quotes come from
Article 59 bis.3.e), Article 27.10 of the Unfair Competition Act, and the long version of Article 97.1.f) come exclusively from the CNMC report, which reproduces a later version of the draft bill that has not been published. Article 20.1 and the short version of Article 97.1.f), by contrast, are confirmed in the PDF the Ministry posted for consultation. There's no guarantee that the text the regulator saw is the one that will reach Parliament.
Why it matters
Here's what no one is reporting: this provision does not appear in the text that went out for public consultation.
The draft bill the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and the 2030 Agenda published for consultation on 4 July 2025, with a deadline of 31 August, is available to download in full. We compared it against what the CNMC cites. Four checks, plus one clue.
One. The phrase "dynamic pricing" does not appear a single time in the text submitted for public consultation: 41,067 words, by our count of the content extracted from the Ministry's PDF.
Two. Article 97.1.f) in that text is a single line: "Where applicable, that the price has been personalised on the basis of automated decision-making." Full stop. No price freeze during the purchase, no personalisation parameters, no price curve.
Three. The list of misleading practices in Article 27 of the Unfair Competition Act ends at point 9, on greenwashing. There is no point 10.
Four. The regulatory impact assessment lists the measures in the law that do not derive from the directives it transposes, and there are five: capping ticket resale prices, shrinkflation, repair vouchers, fossil fuel advertising, and the reform of the Commercial Registry Regulation. Dynamic pricing is not on that list.
The clue. The numbering of the subsections changed. The report states that "the second article, subsection three of the draft bill amends Article 20 TRLGDCU". In the consultation text, that same Article 20 is amended in subsection Two, and Article 97.1 in subsection Five. A provision shifting from subsection two to three is consistent with new wording having been inserted ahead of it. It fits with everything else; on its own, it proves nothing.
It's normal for a draft bill to change between public consultation and its second pass through the Council of Ministers — the procedure allows for it. We don't know why this was added, or when. What's verifiable is the effect: the obligation that demands the most operational work from ticket sellers is the one no one in the industry got to comment on. Anyone who wanted to weigh in on the resale price cap — which we covered separately, along with the regulator's objections — had two months. On publishing the entire price curve: zero.
Dynamic and personalised are not the same thing
The distinction isn't cosmetic. The draft's definition excludes variations based on "the consumer's profile, personal characteristics or individual behaviour". An engine that adjusts for demand, remaining capacity and days left until the event fits the definition of dynamic. One that looks at something about the specific buyer doesn't: it falls under the personalised pricing regime, which is tougher on one point — the parameters must be published — and less demanding on another — it doesn't require publishing the price curve.
Article 20.1, which is confirmed in the public text, adds a limit: "This personalisation may not result in increases to the final sale price when there is a rise in demand in contexts of urgency, risk or need for the consumer".
The consultation text defines that context, something the report doesn't reproduce: "a context of urgency, risk or need for the consumer shall be understood as one arising from any situation that may be classified as a civil protection emergency, under the terms regulated by Law 17/2015 of 9 July on the National Civil Protection System". The trigger is a declared civil protection emergency, not a demand spike. The CNMC, working from a different version, argues the concept "presents legal certainty problems". In the public text, the boundary is defined; whether it survives, we don't know.
The timetable the law can no longer meet
The law incorporates two EU directives, and the report itself sets out their deadlines in its first footnote: "The transposition deadlines for these directives are 31 July 2026 and 27 March 2026, respectively".
Directive (EU) 2024/825, on empowering consumers for the green transition, requires member states to adopt and publish "the necessary provisions by 27 March 2026 at the latest" and apply them "from 27 September 2026". Directive (EU) 2024/1799, on the repair of goods, sets the deadline at 31 July 2026.
The draft bill stuck to that timetable. Its seventh final provision staggers its entry into force around those same dates: part of the articles "shall enter into force on 27 September 2026", another part "on 31 July 2026", and the third article "six months after publication of the law in the Official State Gazette".
Today is 13 August 2026. Both deadlines have passed: the one for 2024/825 four and a half months ago; the one for 2024/1799 two weeks ago. And the law is still a draft bill: there's no record of it having gone back to the Council of Ministers for a second pass, or of it having entered Parliament.
The first consequence is one of legislative drafting. A law cannot enter into force on 31 July 2026 if, by mid-August, it still hasn't been approved. Whatever version eventually goes ahead will have to redo that final provision entirely.
The second is for ticket sellers, and it's our reading, not a fact: the delay is eating into the adaptation window. The text was drafted expecting months between publication in the Official Gazette and the effective application of each block, and that cushion was built on EU dates that have now passed. If the law is approved under the general twenty-day rule from publication, the real deadline for documenting each event's price curve would be measured in weeks. And part of the work — keeping the historical record — allows no retroactive fix.
What else changes for ticket sellers
Dynamic pricing is the headline, but it isn't the only thing changing. According to the report's list, the law touches Articles 17, 18, 20, 20 bis, 46, 48, 49, 52, 52 bis, 59 bis, 60.2, 97.1, 98.2, 115 ter, 118, 120, 127 bis, 127 ter, and Annex IV of the TRLGDCU; and Articles 5, 21, 27 and 32 of the Unfair Competition Act. This is a cross-cutting reform of pre-contractual information, not a patch on pricing.
The penalty regime gets tougher. The report summarises it this way: "the penalty regime is strengthened, as public submission of evidence is provided for, access to case files in earlier stages is restricted, confidentiality is required, and the classification of infringements is revised, linking penalties to turnover for greater legal certainty. In addition, the deadline for resolving case files is extended to one year, and an obligation is introduced to take prior penalties into account to ensure proportionality." Two details change a promoter's risk calculation: the penalty is tied to turnover, and repeat offences count. Spain's consumer authority already fines this industry — we saw it with the fine against Reggaeton Beach Festival. We're not citing figures here: the report doesn't specify them, and we haven't verified any.
The bot provision is already law. It's worth not conflating the two. Article 27.6 of the Unfair Competition Act, which arrived with Directive (EU) 2019/2161, already bans reselling tickets acquired "by using automated means to circumvent any limit imposed on the number of tickets a person may purchase, or any other rule applicable to ticket purchases". That applies today and is part of the legal framework for ticket resale in Spain. The dynamic pricing rules are not: those are still a draft.
No retroactive effect on tickets already sold. The seventh final provision of the consultation text states that certain amendments "shall not apply to contracts entered into before 31 July 2026". As a principle, tickets sold before the law enters into force wouldn't be caught by it. Which specific sections that exemption covers in the new version is something we can't confirm: the numbering is out of step between versions.
The CNMC, for that matter, is no newcomer to this market: it already reported on online sale and resale of tickets for cultural events back in 2018 (INF/CNMC/003/18), and the now-defunct National Competition Commission reviewed the Ticketmaster/Serviticket merger (C/0335/11).
What to do about it
Six concrete checks, in order of effort.
1. Can you reconstruct the price curve of a past event today? The obligation isn't to disclose the current price: it's to disclose the minimum, the maximum and the full price history from the start of the sale, and to do so "for the same product on the same date". That means by ticket type and by event, not a generic notice in the terms and conditions. If your system doesn't keep a timestamped price history per ticket type, you won't be able to prove it. And that record needs to exist from day one of the sale, not from whenever the law is passed.
2. Can your checkout change the price mid-purchase? The price freeze shows up twice in the same article: personalised pricing "must remain unchanged throughout the entire purchase process", and under the dynamic system, "once the purchase process has begun, the price may not be changed at any point". The weak spots are always the same: the cart reservation that expires, the customer who goes back a step, the payment that fails and gets retried, and the price tier that shifts while someone is mid-payment. Cheap to fix now, expensive with a complaint on the table.
3. Does your engine use any signal about the individual buyer? Segmentation by purchase history, device, or browsing behaviour. If the answer is yes, you're not in dynamic pricing under this definition: you're in personalised pricing, which means you'd have to publish the parameters you personalise with, not just disclose that you do it.
4. Can you set your price curve before sales open? Publishing a minimum and maximum means deciding the ceiling in advance and sticking to it. Prices can still drop below the published minimum, as a promotion or discount, but never above the maximum. Anyone currently setting the ceiling on the fly, depending on how sales go, would have to change their method. Our guide to dynamic pricing covers that part; this adds the disclosure obligation on top.
5. What counts as the "start of marketing"? The price curve is measured from that point. Member pre-sales, waitlists with access codes, friends-and-family tiers: if they count as sales to the public, they're part of the marketing period and of the curve. Deciding this in writing beforehand is easier than justifying it afterwards.
6. Who can change a price, and is it logged? A back office where someone can change a ticket type's price without leaving a trace makes it impossible to prove the full price history. Traceability isn't an explicit obligation in the text, but it's the only practical way to meet the one that is.
None of this is in force yet. But points 1 and 6 are decisions that only work if they're made in advance, and the law is already running late on its own timetable.