Live Nation has responded to criticism of a new law introduced by the state of Massachusetts that restricts the resale of tickets, insisting that it will help reduce unscrupulous behaviour by touts and scalpers. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Barcelona City Council has signed an official declaration setting out its commitment to fight against illegal ticket resale.
The way ticket touting is regulated varies greatly around the world and, in some countries, even from state to state. In the US, most regulation is at a state-level, with almost polar opposites in approach. Some states - including California and Rhode Island - legislate against the unofficial resale of tickets for profit, while others - such as Colorado and Virginia - actually protect the rights of resellers.
Massachusetts has just passed legislation which, according to CBS News, allows primary ticket sellers to restrict resale to their own platforms. So, if you buy a ticket to an event on Ticketmaster, you can only resell it via Ticketmaster, providing the primary ticketing platform communicates this restriction upfront.
This move will give the primary platforms - and their promoter clients - more control over the resale of their tickets, putting a cap on resale mark-ups if they so wish - something that Live Nation boss Michael Rapino talked about recently - and making it easier to monitor and block industrial level touts.
Many consumer rights groups campaign for tighter regulation of ticket touting, arguing that secondary ticketing results in prices for in-demand shows surging as bots operated by touts flood ticketing platforms, buying up tickets only for resale, putting regular consumers at a disadvantage.
However, there are also groups that say restrictions on people reselling tickets are unfair, arguing that there are legitimate reasons someone may want to re-sell their tickets, and that resale restrictions benefit the major ticketing companies more than ticket-buyers.
In Boston, a consumer rights group called MASSPIRG has come out against the new law in its state. The organisation’s Deirdre Cummings says, “When you buy concert, sports or other event tickets, you should be able to do whatever you want with them - including re-selling them or giving them to friends or family”.
“Ticket sellers should have no right to prevent us from transferring our own tickets on our own terms”, she goes on, adding, “requiring event tickets to be transferable is both a key consumer protection and common sense”. The big winners of this new law, she concludes, “are the big ticket sellers, not the sports fans or concert goers”.
The biggest ticket seller of them all, Live Nation’s Ticketmaster, is wholeheartedly backing the new law, with its VP Of Corporate And Regulatory Affairs, Dan Wall, telling CBS News that the new rules are very much about stopping industrial level ticket touting.
He added, “it’s about whether professional ticket brokers and the ticket resale sites that support them can use their bots and all their other tactics to grab thousands and thousands of tickets that were meant for real fans and instead put them on resale markets where they’re going to double the price”.
Ticketmaster has become more critical of secondary ticketing in recent years, despite operating its own resale platforms in the past, and still doing so in the US.
It’s entirely possible that the ticketing giant’s change in position is a tactical move as the company seeks to promote the resale and dynamic pricing tools that it has built within its primary ticketing platform. That would support the implication by MASSPIRG’s Cummings that Live Nation backing the new law in Massachusetts is more about its own agenda than protecting ticket buyers.
That said, Ticketmaster would likely argue that it has different tactical reasons for becoming more critical of touting. It certainly more closely aligns the company with the many artists and promoters who have been critical of touts and the secondary ticket markets. Plus there’s the fact that Ticketmaster’s own primary ticketing platform has to deal with an onslaught of bots trying to buy up tickets for touts whenever popular shows go on sale, which places a technical - and reputational - burden on Ticketmaster..
Either way, it seems likely that the regulation of ticket touting is only going to increase in the years ahead, with more governments - at a country, state and city level - seemingly speaking out about the need to restrict the unofficial resale of tickets at a massive mark-up.
Most recently, ticket touting has come under considerable scrutiny - and police investigations - in India following the controversy around the touting of tickets to Coldplay’s shows there.
One city acting directly to combat touting is Barcelona, where the city council has just signed a declaration stating that it is “a city committed to combating the illegal resale of tickets”.
Signed on behalf of the council by Councillor Francesc Xavier Marcé Carol, the declaration adds, “Barcelona is a city firmly committed to culture, and especially to live music and music festivals”, and the unofficial for-profit ticket resale “not only harms fans but also generates no added value - financial and/or cultural - for artists or the live entertainment sector”.
The Barcelona City Council declaration on ticket resale was in part prompted by the pan-European anti-touting campaign FEAT choosing Barcelona as its ‘home city’ earlier this year.
That campaign’s Founding Director, Neo Sala of Doctor Music, says, “This declaration cements Barcelona as a city that supports and nurtures live entertainment, concerts and festivals. I am delighted that the Council agrees with FEAT’s aims and objectives, and we firmly welcome their support in the fight against illegal ticket resale”.