A new bill signed into law in Massachusetts has been widely criticised for ultimately strengthening Ticketmaster’s monopoly.
The Mass Leads Act is an economic development bill focusing on climate technology, life sciences and AI. However, it has a provision that allows ticket sellers to prevent buyers from transferring or reselling tickets, or restrict them to only reselling on the platform where the ticket was bought.
This has been criticised for increasing pricing for fans and undercutting market competition.
The bill comes just six months after Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, faced an anti-trust lawsuit from the US Justice Department. The suit alleged that the company’s concert promotion and ticketing operations have undermined competition in the live music industry, leading to unfair market leverage, high transaction fees and flawed customer service.
The report claims that since the 2010 merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, the enterprise has gone on to control more than 80 per cent of the market for ticket sales in the US.
“Massachusetts joined the federal antitrust suit against Live Nation — but now it’s opening the door for Live Nation to strengthen its monopoly by cutting off the transfer of tickets” said Chamber Of Progress Senior Director Of Technology Policy Todd O’Boyle. “Bay Staters are some of the most dedicated sports fans, but this will make it harder for families to support the Red Sox at Fenway. When the General Court reconvenes in 2025, they should fix this anti-fan mistake.”
The Boston Globe reports that a coalition of consumer advocacy groups sent a letter to Governor Maura Healey last week saying, “Ticket transferability gives consumers control of their tickets after they purchase them, empowering fans to comparison shop across different marketplaces.”
Statistics show that resale marketplaces often save ticket holders a significant amount of money. According to analysis by fan advocacy organisation Protect Ticket Rights, concertgoers in Massachusetts saved $13.87 million when purchasing on resale marketplaces [via Boston.com]. The consumer advocacy organisation Sports Fans Coalition did a similar study and found that fans across the US saved $351 million by buying tickets to sporting events through the secondary ticket market between 2017 and 2024.
In response, Live Nation issued a statement to Stereogum, in which they said: “Broker advocates are masquerading as consumer watchdogs. Fighting this bill protects scalpers who profit off ransoming tickets to the highest bidder. This bill ensures artists and teams have the choice to cap resale and protect their fans from paying two times as much to scalpers.
“Suggestions that Ticketmaster buys back tickets to resell them for profit are unequivocally false.”
Ticketmaster’s practices have been the subject of significant controversy for a while now, particularly in relation to the Oasis reunion tour next summer.
Despite the pair’s strong anti-tout stance and efforts to curb inflated re-sale prices, fans soon discovered that Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing system was in place, which meant that ticket costs increased in response to demand.
According to experts, not warning fans prior to the sale may have been a breach of consumer law, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has also called for a review into dynamic pricing and secondary ticket sites.
The controversy pulled back into focus Robert Smith’s endeavours to keep tickets for The Cure shows affordable for fans.
In an email to fans last year, The Cure frontman vowed to keep ticket prices reasonable on the band’s US tour, writing: “The Cure have agreed all ticket prices, and apart from a few Hollywood Bowl charity seats, there will be no ‘platinum’ or ‘dynamically priced’ tickets on this tour.”
After tickets went on sale, the musician said he was “sickened” by high Ticketmaster fees that were still applied, and subsequently pushed Ticketmaster to give money back for “unduly high” fees.
He also asked Ticketmaster to explain why tickets in the promised face value ticket exchange were “weird” and “over priced”.
