A proposed law in Tennessee would make several deceptive scalper practices illegal.
On March 12, a proposed ticketing bill in Tennessee called the Fairness in Ticketing Act passed through a state house subcommittee by a 6-2 vote. The bill, which has been supported by venues and artists and opposed by secondary-market sellers such as StubHub, has become a battleground over the changing face of the ticket resale business.
The bill would force ticket brokers to register with the state, disclose whether they have tickets in hand, disclose the face value and seat location of tickets and explain refund policies. It’s the latest statehouse battle over the future of the secondary market, with legislatures in Florida, New York and Massachusetts seeing lobbyists from both sides fight over scalper rights. While those state-proposed, scalper-friendly laws that prevented venues from using paperless ticketing to block resale and the Massachusetts regulation even required venues to disclose their ticket allotments on-sale — Tennessee’s is the first of its kind to place restrictions on the secondary market.
Proponents say Tennessee’s Fairness in Ticketing Act is aimed to protect event-goers from unscrupulous scalpers. StubHub and other detractors argue the Fairness in Ticketing Act will restrict sports and entertainment fans’ freedoms and will create an uneven playing field by benefiting Ticketmaster’s secondary ticketing service TicketsNow.
“The bill is about control,” StubHub’s Chief Legal Officer Lance Lanciault said. “It’s about limiting competition and limiting consumer choice about where fans can resell tickets.”
Lanciault called the act a “Trojan horse,” saying it is veiled as a way to protect fans from being duped online but instead is a way for Ticketmaster to funnel consumers toward their product.
“Ticketmaster is squarely behind this bill,” he said. “Their CEO has stated that their No. 1 goal is to gain share in the secondary market. This bill is an attempt to tell consumers that they have to buy tickets where Ticketmaster sells them instead of where they want to sell tickets.”
On the other side of the debate stands the FansFirst Coalition — a group made up of venues and artists around the country who say their goal is to “improve the ticket-purchase experience for fans by fighting for greater access to face-value tickets and enhanced protection against fraudulent business practices.”
FansFirst President Michael Marion, who is also the general manager of Verizon Arena in North Little Rock, Ark., said legislation is simply about protecting fans from being misled or scammed by sellers.
“What’s happened over the years is the Internet has taken over and a lot more things can happen now,” Marion said. “The laws haven’t changed to reflect that.”
One of FanFirst’s biggest concerns, which is addressed in the Fairness in Ticketing Act, is that websites set up shop under names that appear to be connected to an event or venue, then sell tickets that they don’t have before the tickets have actually gone on sale. Online scalpers then design “bots” to purchase as many tickets as possible at the moment they do hit the market.
“We are having Pink in here and tickets haven’t gone on sale yet, but we’ll get calls from people” asking about tickets they see being sold on third-party sites, often confusing primary and secondary ticket purchases, Marion said. “So we’ll say ‘no, those are from a scalper,’ and that scalper doesn’t actually even have the tickets and they’re selling them for five times the price.”
Also supporting the Fairness in Ticketing Act is the Tennessee Sports and Entertainment Industry Coalition, a 74-member group that includes artists The Black Keys and Eric Church; venues such as Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis and the state’s three major professional sports teams, the Predators, the Titans and the Memphis Grizzlies, along with their associated venues.
If the Fairness in Ticketing Act becomes law, sites like StubHub would have to reveal the face value of tickets on their site and disclose whether they are actually in the seller’s possession.
Marion said that another difficulty caused by some online sellers is it’s harder to help fans with ticket issues if they bought them from the secondary market, especially from unaffiliated websites.
“Some scalpers are printing tickets at home and selling the same ticket five or six times,” he said. “Then when people show up, the ticket only works once and they get rejected. They think they bought the tickets from us when they actually bought them from a scalper. We do all we can and sell them another ticket.”
“By having these scalpers registered and having some information on them, maybe some of that could be avoided.”
Lanciault said the Ebay-owned company supports legislation that will help avoid ticket mishaps, but insisted it has to be done without restricting the free market.
“The way this legislation reads, its almost like saying you can only resell your car if you do it at the dealership where you bought it,” Lanciault said. “It’s naturally going to drive the price up and not be a benefit to consumers like they say it will.”
Additional committees still must review the Fairness in Ticketing Act and it must be approved by both houses of the Tennessee General Assembly to become law.
Interviewed for this story: Michael Marion, (501) 975-9030; Lance Lancaiult, (540) 491-4552