Ticketing
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StubHub must pay more than $16 million in legal damages after a jury decided that the ticketing giant intentionally torpedoed a smaller company’s lucrative concierge partnership with American Express.
Following a month-long trial, a Los Angeles jury on Friday (May 24) sided with Spotlight Ticket Management — a tech startup that had sued over allegations that StubHub failed to pay Spotlight millions in commissions and then used false statements to “poison” the company’s relationship with Amex.
Leading up to the trial, StubHub had argued it paid Spotlight everything that was owed and that the smaller firm had killed its Amex deal itself by being an “unreasonable partner” to the financial giant: “The true cause of Spotlight’s demise was Spotlight itself.”
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But in Friday’s verdict, the jurors found for Spotlight on both issues. They ordered StubHub to pay $3 million over the commissions; $5.3 million over money lost from the terminated Amex partnership; and another $8.1 million that they said Spotlight would have earned from Amex in the future.
StubHub did not immediately return a request for comment. Amex was not named as a defendant in the case or accused of any wrongdoing. In a statement, Spotlight called the verdict “a victory for Spotlight, for affiliate partners more broadly, and for ticket purchasers across the country.”
Launched in 2007, Spotlight offers ticketing management software to help companies provide event access to their employees or customers. One of its major clients was Amex, which used Spotlight as part of its concierge system to buy concert and sports tickets for premium cardholders.
In its lawsuit, Spotlight claimed that it had successfully partnered with StubHub for years, sending as much as $85 million in ticket sales to the company’s platform and receiving a 7% commission on those sales.
But starting in 2016, Spotlight claimed that StubHub began underpaying those commissions. And when the smaller company raised the dispute, it claimed that StubHub retaliated by tanking its relationship with Amex with false and disparaging claims.
“StubHub gave Amex an ‘ultimatum’ that it could not work with Spotlight for these reasons and Amex would lose access to StubHub’s entire ticket inventory, crushing the availability of secondary market tickets to the Amex Concierge program overnight, unless Amex got rid of Spotlight,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a pre-trial briefing.
StubHub sharply disagreed. In its own filings, the company argued that it had paid Spotlight all the commissions that it was actually owed under its affiliate program. And it said that the smaller company had “destroyed its own relationship with Amex” through “erratic behavior.”
“Spotlight has taken a modest dispute about payment of affiliate commissions and morphed it into a conspiratorial web to support its claim for hundreds of millions of dollars,” StubHub’s attorneys wrote. “Amex witnesses have testified that they decided not to renew based on Spotlight’s unreasonable demands and that StubHub had nothing to do with Amex’s decision.”
But following a three-week trial, jurors believed Spotlight’s version of events, finding StubHub liable for breach of contract over the unpaid commissions as well as intentional interference with contract and intentional interference with prospective economic relations over the Amex partnership.
StubHub can appeal the verdict, first by asking the judge to order a new trial and then by taking the case to a California appeals court.
The Maryland bill targeting speculative ticketing in the state was signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore today. The consumer protection bill focuses on the sale and resale of live event tickets and was supported by the Recording Academy, National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), Eventbrite and more.
The bill bans speculative ticketing (the practice of listing tickets on secondary sites before a reseller owns a ticket), as well as require ticketers to present “all in” pricing for consumers, meaning the full price of the ticket — including all fees — must be present in the price first shown to fans. The law will go into effect on July 1.
“In addition to Senators [Dawn Danielle] Gile and [Pamela] Beidle and Delegate [C.T.] Wilson, we’re also grateful to Marylanders who spoke out and let their elected officials know that they want protection from parasitic scalpers who use acts of deception to gouge concert fans,” said Audrey Fix Schaefer, communications director of Merriweather Post Pavilion and I.M.P. in a statement. “Nearly 17,000 letters were sent by Marylanders to their state legislators, letting those in Annapolis know they want protection from the rampant deception and abuse that’s taking place now. We applaud the entire State legislature for this groundbreaking legislation, and we look forward to working with the Attorney General’s office to help ensure enforcement.”
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The bill requires resellers to provide the zone and seat number for non-general admission events, eliminating the common practice of resellers listing an unspecified seat and procuring a ticket — for a lesser price — once a consumer has purchased the “unspecified” seat from a secondary site. It also reduces resellers’ ability to list generic tickets on resale sites before on-sale for the actual event has occurred.
A standout of the bill for proponents like NIVA, NITO and others, is that the bill makes it illegal for secondary ticketing platforms to provide a marketplace for the sale or resale of tickets that violate the law. If a consumer purchases a ticket that is counterfeit, canceled by the reseller or fails to meet its original description, the secondary platform would be responsible for paying the consumer back for the total amount paid, including any fees. Platforms selling or offering to sell speculative tickets can be fined up to $10,000 for the first infraction and $25,000 for each subsequent infraction.
Additionally, the bill mandates “all-in” ticket pricing — where consumers see the full price of the ticket, including fees, from the beginning of their transaction — and require those fees to be itemized so fans know where their dollars are going. The passage of the bill also means Maryland’s attorney general’s office can conduct a review of how resellers are procuring their tickets, the price difference for fans on the primary versus secondary market, fraudulent tickets, the use of bots, what measures other states have enacted to protect consumers during the ticket buying process and more.
The AG’s study is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.
Taylor Swift is returning to the road to complete the final leg of her Eras Tour for fans eager to hear the singer-songwriter perform new tracks like “Fortnight,” “Down Bad” and “Florida!!!” from her new album, The Tortured Poets Department.
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But those fans may be in for some sticker shock. Prices to see Swift at one of her final nine shows in the United States have increased following the release of the album April 19, with the average get-in-the-door price — the lowest price available — hovering around $2,600 per ticket, according to data from TicketIQ. That means it would cost a couple more than $5,000 just to be in the same building as Swift in Miami (Oct 18-20), New Orleans (Oct 25-27) and Indianapolis (Nov. 1-3) this fall.
In Europe, however — where Swift starts a 51-show run on May 9 with a kickoff date at Paris’ La Defense Arena — tickets cost only a fraction of that. Right now, the get-in-the door price to see the opening of the European leg of the Eras Tour is $340 a ticket — 87% cheaper than the average price in the United States.
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That means a fan in Miami could fly to Paris for about $900 a person (according to prices generated on kayak.com), spend two nights at a four-star hotel at $250 a night and purchase a $340 concert ticket for a grand total of $1,740 — which is still $760 less than the cheapest tickets currently available for her Miami shows.
Tickets to see Swift in Stockholm (May 17-19) are even cheaper, at $312 for the cheapest tickets, while tickets for her show in Portugal (May 24-25) start at $336 and in Spain (May 29-30) start at $324. Prices do start to climb in the United Kingdom, with the get-in-the-door price hovering around £540 (about $674 USD) for Swift’s Liverpool shows (June 13-15). Prices to see Swift at Wembley Stadium (June 21-23) hover around £720 ($900).
The reason for the huge difference in price, experts say, is due in part to longstanding consumer skepticism about resale tickets in most of Europe. That’s coupled with a much more aggressive regulatory environment where artists and consumers are empowered to report and remove illegal ticket listings, and where prices are kept low thanks to laws limiting how high tickets can be marked up over face value.
The European approach is significantly different from that of the United States, where ticket resale is not regulated and deceptive marketing practices, including the use of deceptive websites and speculative ticket listings, continue unabated despite widespread outcry from consumers. And federal officials don’t regularly enforce the few ticketing laws that do exist. It took five years after the BOTS Act — banning automated programs that jump the queue and buy up tickets — was passed for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to bring a case against brokers for violating the bill.
Sam Shemtob, managing director for ticket resale advocacy group Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing (FEAT), points to Europe as a model for how governments can be more vigilant about regulating resale markets. In countries like France, Germany and the Netherlands, ticket resellers face limits on how much tickets can be marked up on secondary sites — typically 20% over face value. Other countries like the United Kingdom allow resale but restrict who is allowed to post tickets for resale and give artists and event promoters the right to take some resale ticket listings down.
Adopting European-style regulations in the United States by restricting ticket markups to 20% above face value would transform the concert business overnight and likely drive prices down dramatically on the secondary market. Markup caps would also likely make programs like Ticketmaster’s platinum ticket pricing (which charges high markups for a small percentage of tickets to offset the resale market) obsolete and significantly reduce the number of ticket brokers and bad actors using bots to disrupt ticket sales and illegally buy up tickets.
A federal cap on ticket markups would also significantly disrupt the secondary ticketing market and push many brokers out of business, which might create unintended consequences for sports teams that are much more willing to sell season tickets to brokers and depend on resellers for distribution. It’s also unclear if Americans would even accept a regulatory framework capping how much tickets could be marked up. Lawmakers in New York, Utah, Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia have all passed laws in the last decade making it illegal to restrict how and where ticket brokers resell tickets. While U.S. consumers often complain about the excesses of ticket resale and like the idea of using technology to keep tickets out of the hands of scalpers, they also dislike the restrictions that come with non-transferable tickets and tend to loudly oppose policies that create inconveniences.
Shemtob notes that Europe’s ticketing rules aren’t just about protecting price, but are also designed to empower citizens to take action.
On Jan. 1, 2025, Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) will go into effect, creating a uniform set of guidelines for online ticket resale requiring resellers to disclose their names and contact details to potential ticket buyers. The DSA also mandates that resale platforms track takedowns of public ticket listings (to help provide a record of the deceptive activity taking place) and ban deceptive marketing practices.
While many of the DSA’s reforms mirror U.S. efforts to clean up ticketing, Shemtob says a provision in the DSA bill that makes it simple to flag, report and take down ticket listings that violate the rules is a game-changer for consumer advocates. The law creates “a clear process for removing illegal ticket listings as and when they appear,” he said in a statement provided to Billboard, putting in place “the groundwork for a fairer, more transparent ticket-buying experience for consumers.”
Besides keeping prices in Europe low, the legislation has also led to a surprising boom in tourism from U.S. fans traveling to the continent to pursue cheaper Eras Tour tickets: A spokesperson for StubHub told Billboard that 68% of ticket purchases for Swift’s 51-show run in Europe have come from U.S. buyers.
Ticketing for live events is not only under the Justice Department’s microscope but front and center for music fans across the country. This focus places our industry at a crossroads. We can either stay with the status quo, in which events are egregiously expensive and funds go to resellers rather than artists and venues, or we can use this moment to support reform that benefits the broader live event ecosystem.
For too long, fans, artists, and venues have been caught in an unchecked marketplace riddled with speculative ticketing, deceptive practices and exorbitant price gouging.
But all is not lost. We have an opportunity to establish guardrails that protect fans, create trust and promote a healthy live event industry.
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The Fans First Act is the right bill, at the right time. If passed, this important bipartisan legislation will bring much-needed enforcement and transparency, prohibit deceptive websites, disclose resellers, and ban speculative ticketing. That is why we call on Congress to pass this important legislation and move it to the White House for signature.
The Problem
To understand why we need the Fans First Act requires a full understanding of the problem and how we got here.
Fans find themselves in a perfect storm. Amid inflation and an unpredictable economy, they face bots, brokers and skyrocketing prices for live experiences (concert ticket prices have increased by 35% since 2019), according to Pollstar. While fans are eager to see their favorite acts and artists live, too many cannot.
Music festivals are a prime example of live events looking to adapt to the current economic environment of increased costs for fans (tickets, travel/lodging and food) and rising production fees. Unfortunately for fans, this means canceled events. This year, manyfestivals have been canceled as organizers look to consolidate and adjust to rising fees and economic constraints.
Dig deeper into the fan experience and we find that many fans’ first engagement with live entertainment is through a reseller on a secondary ticketing site, sometimes posing as the actual venue.
Fans are often asked to cough up well over $500 for a decent ticket on the secondary market, and that’s for real tickets. A buyer has no sense of clarity about the primary ticket seller. For example, Seattle fan Kerry Dellisanti had her own dream crushed when her $895 nosebleed ticket for a Taylor Swift concert turned out to be speculative (fake). Her friends ended up enjoying the show without her.
Fans across genres and localities are frequently deceived by fake tickets. Many book non-refundable travel and hotels for concerts they think they have a real ticket for, but they’ve been scammed.
Everyone is losing in this environment.
Unscrupulous brokers and illegal bots have been increasingly detrimental to consumers. As they resell tickets at the highest possible price, it’s having a direct impact on the full ecosystem of live events, harming fans, artists and venues alike.
Sky-high profit margins for the secondary ticket seller means fans are seeing fewer shows and spending less on venue concessions and merchandise that sustain organizers and artists. When fans show up at a venue with a fake or overpriced ticket, the predatory seller who defrauded them is nowhere to be found. It is the venue owners, artists and small businesses who are left to pick up the pieces of this unchecked ticketing ecosystem.
The Solution
Our industry is at a crossroads. Cater to the resellers and brokers who have no investment in the concerts? Or swing the power of the live performance industry back into the hands of fans, artists and venues?
We call on Congress to pass the Fans First Act. Fans, artists and venues are the lifeblood of the live entertainment industry and their experience should always be at the forefront. The time is now to give the industry back to the people who make it tick and get back to what makes live events and music so important — and what fuels local economies across the country.
The connection. The experience.
Julia Hartz is co-founder, CEO and executive board chair of Eventbrite.
Stephen Parker is executive director of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA).
A controversial California Assembly bill that would have forced Ticketmaster to share its ticketing inventory with resale sites StubHub and SeatGeek has been amended with anti-resale provisions that would allow promoters like Live Nation to ban Stubhub and SeatGeek from selling its concert tickets in California.
The whiplash legislative maneuvering is the result of the music industry’s successful effort to thwart Oakland lawmaker Buffy Wicks’ attempt to address long-standing consumer complaints against Ticketmaster, forcing her to significantly water down the legislation.
The original version of the bill was introduced on April 8, when Wicks held a press conference with the California Consumer Federation and members of several state Chamber of Commerce groups and unveiled a plan, endorsed by StubHub and SeatGeek, to “make the ticket market more competitive.” To accomplish this, the bill proposed to outlaw Live Nation’s use of exclusive venue contracts, which Wicks said gave the company an unhealthy 80% share of the concert market and had led to a steep price increase for tickets since the company’s merger with Ticketmaster in 2009.
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Wicks’ bill also included a clause — shocking to many in the live entertainment space — that would have required Ticketmaster to develop software integrations allowing rival ticketing companies and ticket resale sites to pull ticketing inventory from the Ticketmaster site and sell it on their own sites. Wicks said she wanted to create a Kayak.com-style marketplace for tickets, where sites like StubHub and SeatGeek, along with smaller primary ticketing companies like Dice and Tixr, sold the same concert tickets Ticketmaster was selling.
The proposal was immediately opposed by professional sports teams including the Golden State Warriors and the San Francisco 49ers, along with concert promoters, venue operators, arts groups and a number of live music industry organizations including the National Independent Venues Association, the Recording Academy and the Music Artist Coalition. Critics said the bill stripped California venues of their rights to monetize their ticketing contracts and transferred the power to control how tickets were sold from artists and venues to third-party technology companies without any safeguards.
Wicks explained that the bill would help consumers by making ticketing companies compete to sell tickets, but opponents said sellers would still be incentivized to raise ticket prices for major concerts when demand significantly outpaced supply. Others argued that giving resale sites direct access to primary tickets would push more tickets into the hands of scalpers and cause prices to skyrocket.
Booking agent Sam Hunt with Wasserman Music described the bill as problematic during an April 16 subcommittee hearing, warning that it “punished artists” and “established a dangerous system for fans.”
“Artists agree that the ticketing process is deeply flawed,” said Hunt, before adding that the blame lies with “unregulated ticket brokers” and “the secondary platforms that allow them to exist and flourish.”
Facing universal opposition from the live music industry and several members of the committee, Wicks vowed to make changes to the legislation.
On Tuesday (April 24), during a hearing of the Assembly’s Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, Wicks introduced a new, partially completed bill that exempted professional and collegiate sports teams from the new rules. More notably, it included a clause stating that it would be an artist’s decision “to determine the terms and conditions related to the sale, pricing, distribution and transfer of tickets to their events.”
That new language, which mirrors that of legislation in other states as well as proposed federal legislation, was interpreted to mean that artists would be given the right to block resale sites from selling their tickets, potentially ending the resale of concert tickets in California — a sharp contrast with the original bill.
Wicks said the amendment resulted from a compromise with other legislators and was still being revised and amended. Lobbyists for secondary sites like StubHub and SeatGeek testified that they would pull their support for the bill if the new language remained.
Wicks isn’t the only politician tackling ticketing initiatives. Since the high-profile crash of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour ticket sale in November 2022, Ticketmaster has come under fire from members of both parties in Congress and is reportedly the subject of a DOJ investigation on antitrust charges. State lawmakers across the country have largely tried and failed to pass legislation curbing Ticketmaster’s power, but few have swung and missed quite like Wicks, who initially chose to align her efforts with the secondary ticketing market.
Today’s modern live music industry is a diverse cross-section of competing multinational corporations and independent businesses made up of venue operators, talent agencies, concert promoters, artists and their managers, and primary ticketing companies. The broad group of competing interests doesn’t agree on much, except for their universal opposition to the ticket resale business, which many believe caused the Swift ticket sale crash. The bot attack that preceded the temporary disruption of the sale had all the hallmarks of similar attacks utilized by ticket scalping groups.
In its defense, reps for the secondary ticketing business argue that sites like StubHub and SeatGeek provide a safe marketplace to buy and sell tickets that has been embraced by consumers and duplicated by Ticketmaster, which operates its own resale business.
The friction between the music industry and the secondary market involves access to high-demand concerts by artists like Swift and Olivia Rodrigo. Lobbyists for resale sites say Ticketmaster unfairly blocks ticket resellers from accessing high-demand tickets. Ticketmaster officials argue their artist clients want their tickets to be sold directly to fans and not marked up on resale sites.
Following the introduction of Wicks’ revamped bill in California, a new round of debate ensued. During the committee discussion of the legislation, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan said that Wicks’ logic that a Kayak.com site would push ticket prices down was flawed, noting that with hotels, “There’s no secondary market to sell a room for two, three or four” times what was originally paid to book the room.
Assemblymember Lori Wilson added that Wicks should focus her efforts on determining whether Ticketmaster held a competitive or unfair advantage. Committee chair Rebecca Bauer-Kahan said legislators needed to focus on putting consumers first, adding, “We as a committee don’t necessarily think the largest problem is the monopoly at the front end but the brokers in the middle who are buying up the tickets and leading to a lot of the problems” in the marketplace.
Despite these reservations, the new, radically different legislation will move forward. After a brief vote, the rewritten bill passed in the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee and now heads to the Appropriations Committee, where Wicks serves as chair.
More than 250 artists including Billie Eilish, Lorde, Fall Out Boy, Diplo, Becky G, Green Day, Sia and many more signed an open letter on Thursday (April 25) to the Senate Committee on Commerce urging Congress to pass the Fans First Act. The artists argue that the bill advocating for consumer protections against bots and more transparency in ticket sales is vital to the survival of the live music business.
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“As artists and members of the music community, we rely on touring for our livelihood, and we value music fans above all else,” the letter opens. “We are joining together to say that the current system is broken: predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair price. Predatory resellers have gone unregulated while siphoning money from the live entertainment ecosystem for their sole benefit.”
The letter says that these predatory sellers use illegal bots, speculative ticket listings and deceitful advertising that causes real harm to consumers. “The relationship between artist and fan, which forms the backbone of the entire music industry, is severed,” the letter warns. “No one cares more about fans than the artists. When predatory resellers scoop up face value tickets ahead of fans in order to resell at inflated prices on the secondary market, artists lose the ability to connect with their fans who cannot afford to attend.”
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The Fix the Tix letter argues that fans are lured in by deceptive URLs and ads that “disguise resale and trick consumers into playing up to 20x face value” when face value tickets are still available from the venue, as well “predatory” resellers listing tickets for shows before they go on sale — before they even have tickets in hand — which often result in fans showing up to venues without a valid ticket.
“Predatory resellers do not invest in creating a great live experience or fostering the live musicecosystem – they simply profit off of the hard work of artists, venues and the crew,” it reads. “In fact, resellers and secondary ticketing platforms often profit more from the artist’s work than the artists themselves.”
The signees advocate for the bipartisan Fans First Act — introduced in December by Senators John Cornyn, Amy Klobuchar, Marsha Blackburn, Peter Welch, Roger Wicker and Ben Ray Lujan — which would ban fake tickets and deceptive marketing tactics, as well as requiring ticket sellers to show the full, itemized price of a ticket from the moment the transaction begins, with clear penalties and enforcement to back the bill up.
“We, as artists, as music lovers, and as concert attendees ourselves, urge you to support the Fans First Act to combat predatory resellers’ deceptive ticketing practices and the secondary platforms, which also profit from these practices,” the letter concludes. “Predatory resellers should not be more profitable than the people dedicating their lives to their art.” The letter was addressed to Sen. Maria Cantwell, the chair of the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee and the panel’s ranking member, Texas’ Ted Cruz, with Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, minority leader Mitch McConnell, Cornyn and Klobuchar cc’d as well.
Among the other signees to the letter include: Aimee Mann, Finneas, Evanescence’s Amy Lee, Nile Rodgers, OK GO, Halestorm, Becky G, Graham Nash, Goose, Pixies, Particle Kid, Ben Folds, Rickie Lee Jones, Jason Mraz, the members of Duran Duran, Bright Eyes, Julia Michaels, Cyndi Lauper, Sylvan Esso, Major Lazer, MGMT, Yes and many more.
Online ticket resale platform StubHub is considering going public as soon as this summer if it can secure a valuation of more than $16 billion, according to media reports. The Information first reported on Friday (April 12) that StubHub is aiming for a valuation of $16.5 billion, or the valuation it received in 2021 during […]
Elected officials in Maryland are currently moving a ticketing reform bill titled SB0539 through the state legislature, with approval from both the House and Senate pending. The proposed law is a consumer protection bill aimed at the sale and resale of live event tickets that has been endorsed by the Recording Academy, National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), Eventbrite and more.
The current iteration of the bill would ban speculative ticketing (the practice of listing tickets on secondary sites before a reseller owns a ticket), as well as require ticketers to present “all in” pricing for consumers, meaning the full price of the ticket — including all fees — must be present in the price first shown to fans. The bill would pertain to concerts, theater shows and live sporting events.
Based on the bill’s language, resellers will have to provide the zone and seat number for non-general admission events. This would eliminate the common practice of resellers listing an unspecified seat and procuring a ticket — for a lesser price — once a consumer has purchased the “unspecified” seat from a secondary site. It would also reduce resellers’ ability to list generic tickets on resale sites before on-sale for the actual event has occurred.
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Audrey Fix Schaefer, vp of the board of directors and communications director for the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), tells Billboard that fans regularly search online for concert tickets for shows promoted by I.M.P. — where she also serves as communications director — and are directed to misleading secondary sites that mark up the price or offer tickets for events that haven’t yet gone on sale.
“It’s fraud,” she says. “It’s unregulated arbitrage that deceives fans into thinking that they have to overpay because they can’t get a ticket through us. They figure that it sold out when the tickets haven’t been put on sale.”
Fix Schaefer gives the example of Mitski’s upcoming tour, which will make two stops at I.M.P.’s Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., later this year. For those shows, $125 tickets were being advertised on secondary sites for $12,000 before the actual on-sale. “That’s obscene,” she says, and “there isn’t a single show [resellers] don’t do this on.”
The Maryland bill would also make it illegal for secondary ticketing platforms to provide a marketplace for the sale or resale of tickets that violate the law. If a consumer purchases a ticket that is counterfeit, canceled by the reseller or fails to meet its original description, the secondary platform would be responsible for paying the consumer back for the total amount paid, including any fees.
Making the platforms responsible for the refunds is “a huge win,” says Fix Schaefer, who notes that other consumer protection ticketing laws like the federal Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act tend to go after individual resellers who are harder to prosecute. Several states around the country are also looking to tackle unfair ticketing practices, including Arizona’s HB2040 (informally known as the “Taylor Swift bill”), which would make it illegal to use bots to purchase unauthorized amounts of tickets or circumvent electronic queues to skip lines ahead of waiting fans. But similar to the federal BOTS Act, the fines for violating these proposed laws would be borne by individuals — not the platforms.
Secondary ticketing platforms, Fix Schaefer adds, are “not going to want to take [the] hit for [resellers]…it’s like having a storefront where they know they’re selling illegal goods but they say, ‘Oh, I just rented that shelf out so somebody.’ No. You’re responsible.”
The Maryland bill would also mandate “all-in” ticket pricing — where consumers see the full price of the ticket, including fees, from the beginning of their transaction — and require those fees to be itemized so fans know where their dollars are going. Nathaniel Marro, managing director of NITO, explains that this portion of the bill will greatly benefit artists. “Artists have no capability of controlling the fees. They don’t make any money off those fees. They are going to the venue and the promoter and the ticketing company,” he says. “The artist wants those fees separated because when fans complain and get upset about how much tickets cost, the only people they are going to point to is the artist.”
Artists will also benefit from fans not spending their entire entertainment budgets on tickets alone. As Marro argues, most fans have a finite level of ancillary income and, if they are spending all or most of it on the ticket, that’s less money spent on music and merch, which goes directly to the performers they came to see.
While other measures, including a cap on resale prices and one that would have compelled secondary sites to identify resellers who are breaking the law, were stricken from the bill as it passed through the state legislature last month, a provision that remained was the commission of a study looking into ticketing practices. If the bill is passed, The Consumer Protection Division of the Office of the Attorney General will conduct a review of how resellers are procuring their tickets, the price difference for fans on the primary versus secondary market, fraudulent tickets, the use of bots, what measures other states have enacted to protect consumers during the ticket buying process and more.
Fix Schaefer predicts that the study, which would be produced by the end of 2024, would succeed in bringing legislatures back to the table on measures like resale caps. “As they are gathering the facts and the data to see what kind of consumer deception and gouging occurs,” she says, “they will be left with a mission to come back and do more.”
A bipartisan coalition of high-profile U.S. senators introduced a sweeping ticketing reform bill today that backers say would significantly improve transparency in concert and sports ticketing, better manage and enforce laws around ticket resale and ban deceptive sales tactics designed to trick consumers into overpaying for access to major events.
The Fans First Act, sponsored by U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and co-sponsored by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Peter Welch (D-VT) is the most comprehensive ticketing industry reform package ever introduced in Congress. It could lead to needed reforms long championed by consumer rights groups, advocacy groups and live music companies including both Live Nation and Ticketmaster, as well as members of the Fix The Tix coalition: the National Independent Venue Association, the Recording Academy, the National Independent Talent Organization, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals.
“The current ticketing system is riddled with problems and doesn’t serve the needs of fans, teams, artists, or venues,” Sen. Cornyn said in a statement. “This legislation would rebuild trust in the ticketing system by cracking down on bots and others who take advantage of consumers through price gouging and other predatory practices and increase price transparency for ticket purchasers.”
Klobuchar added, “Buying a ticket to see your favorite artist or team is out of reach for too many Americans. Bots, hidden fees, and predatory practices are hurting consumers whether they want to catch a home game, an up-and-coming artist or a major headliner like Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny. From ensuring fans get refunds for canceled shows to banning speculative ticket sales, this bipartisan legislation will improve the ticketing experience.”
The Fans First Act boasts more than a dozen reform proposals aimed at protecting consumers, including requiring sites like StubHub and Ticketmaster to disclose the full price of tickets including fees at the beginning of the sale and detail if tickets are being sold by a primary seller or a reseller.
The bill would also strengthen the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, signed into law in 2016 by President Barack Obama, which prohibits the use of automated bots to purchase tickets online. It would additionally require sellers and resellers to provide proof of purchase to consumers within 24 hours of purchase and refund consumers the full cost of their tickets when events are canceled. If passed, the bill would also commission a Government Accountability Office study to investigate the marketplace and make recommendations.
Among other provisions, the Fans First Act would also ban the sale of a ticket that the reseller claims they possess but don’t acquire until they have already secured a sale for the ticket. Known as speculative ticket sales, the practice is often the subject of complaints from consumers who later learn they significantly overpaid for tickets.
Those who violate the law could face civil penalties and be added to a reporting website for fans to file complaints about illegal ticket sales tactics that would then be investigated by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general.
“Fans have become increasingly frustrated with how difficult it has been to obtain affordable tickets to see their favorite artists perform,” said Sen. Blackburn. “Bots are snatching up tickets and selling them for exorbitant prices on secondary markets, while some ticketing companies are selling speculative event tickets that don’t even exist. This bipartisan legislation builds upon my work to safeguard artists and their fans in the online ticket marketplace.”
Sen. Luján stated that the “current ticketing system is limiting access to live entertainment,” adding, “That’s why I’m proud to join my colleagues in introducing the Fans First Act to ensure the sale of tickets is accessible to all consumers.” Sen. Wicker added, “Deceptive ticketing practices have become far too common. This bipartisan effort would result in more transparency and less price gauging.”
The Fan First Act is expected to be heard by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Earlier this week, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce passed a similar bill called the Speculative Ticketing Oversight and Prohibition (STOP) Act, which is now eligible for a vote by the full House.
The STOP Act also bans speculative ticketing, and like the Fans First Act, addresses a range of deceptive ticketing practices and pricing transparency issues. Live Nation and other groups have also expressed support for the STOP Act.
Earlier today, Live Nation officials issued a statement endorsing the Fans First Act.
“We support the Fans First Act and welcome legislation that brings positive reform to live event ticketing. We believe it’s critical Congress acts to protect fans and artists from predatory resale practices, and have long supported a federal all-in pricing mandate, banning speculative ticketing and deceptive websites, as well as other measures. We look forward to our continued work with policymakers to advocate for even stronger reforms and enforcement,” the statement reads.
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. also came out with a statement supporting the bill on Friday. “With the introduction of the Fans First Act today, the Recording Academy applauds Senators Klobuchar, Cornyn, Blackburn, Luján, Wicker and Welch for taking this important step towards comprehensive ticketing reform,” he said. “As we work together to improve the ticket marketplace, we urge Congress to act on this bill quickly and continue its effort to protect both artists and fans by increasing transparency and limiting bad actors that take away from the joyous experience of live music.”
Buying concert tickets could become an easier, more straightforward process after the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce passed the Speculative Ticketing Oversight and Prohibition (STOP) Act on Wednesday (Dec. 6). The bill is now eligible for a vote by the full House.
The STOP Act, which Rep. Gus Bilirakus (R-Fla.) called the “biggest ticket reform in years,” does far more than prevent speculative ticketing, though. The bill also addresses a range of deceptive ticketing practices and transparency issues that perplex, aggravate and annoy consumers.
For starters, the bill requires ticket sellers to conspicuously show the final ticket price at the beginning of the purchase process rather than at check-out. “The first price that you see when you order the ticket is the price that you pay — not a penny more,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) during Wednesday’s hearing.
The bill also ensures ticket buyers can get refunds when concerts are cancelled or postponed. Ticket buyers will have the option of receiving a full refund or, subject to availability, a replacement ticket if the event is postponed and rescheduled in the same or a “comparable” location.
“Consumers should not be left on the hook if an event is canceled or postponed and should have the option to receive a full refund or comparable ticket to a rescheduled show or game,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (C-NJ).
The STOP Act also helps consumers know if they’re buying a ticket from the primary seller or a secondary marketplace. The bill would require ticket sellers to provide buyers with a “a clear and conspicuous statement” that the provider is engaged in the secondary sale of the ticket. In addition, the secondary ticket marketplace cannot state that it is “affiliated with or endorsed by a venue, team, or artist” unless a partnership agreement exists.
Deceptive websites that could mislead ticket buyers are also banned. Ticket providers are prevented from using a domain name or subdomain that contains the name of a specific team, league, venue, performance or artist — including “substantially similar” and misspelled names — unless authorized by the owner of the name. Ticket sellers must also make their refund policies known up front.
Finally, as the name of the bill implies, the STOP Act bans speculative ticketing, in effect barringprimary and secondary ticketing marketplaces from selling tickets they do not possess.
For its part, Live Nation, owner of the country’s largest ticketing company, Ticketmaster, welcomes the new measures. “We’ve long supported a federal all-in pricing mandate, along with other measures including banning speculative ticketing and deceptive websites that trick fans,” the company said in a statement. “We’ll continue working with policymakers, advocating for even stronger reforms and enforcement to stop predatory practices that hurt fans and artists.”
Even if the STOP Act passes in the full House, the U.S. Senate must pass a version of the bill for it to become law. Two similar bills have already been introduced in the Senate. Like the STOP Act, the TICKET Act, introduced by Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), would prevent hidden ticket fees, require upfront pricing and stop speculative ticket selling. The Unlocking Ticketing Markets Act, introduced by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), would limit exclusive, multi-year ticketing contracts in live entertainment.