California assemblymember’s bill would cap ticket reseller markups for select concerts and venues

By Kenny Choi

The rising cost of attending live events has priced out many concertgoers for years. A California lawmaker wants to address one part of the problem by limiting how much some tickets can be marked up on the resale market.

AB 1720, the California Fans First Bill authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) would cap resale markups at 10% for tickets to certain concerts and other live entertainment events.

“What’s happening at [San Francisco’s] Castro Theatre is the same as what’s happening at Outside Lands,” Haney said. “The tickets go up for sale. Let’s say 2,000 tickets at Castro Theatre, a huge number of them, in some cases the majority, are bought not by fans but by scalpers.”

The proposal targets secondary ticket marketplaces such as StubHub and Gametime. It would not apply to sporting events or venues and festivals that hold more than 3,000 people, including the Outside Lands festival in the city’s Golden Gate Park this weekend.

Under the legislation, if tickets to an event at a smaller venue were originally sold for $100, a reseller could charge no more than $110.

“These are organized multimillion-, sometimes billion-dollar operations,” Haney said. “They scoop them up, sometimes using bots before fans can get there, then charge four, five, six times as much in order to go see the concert.”

Some consumer advocates, however, argue that restricting the secondary market will not significantly lower ticket prices if concert and ticketing giants such as Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster are allowed to continue operating as they do now.

“It seems unbelievably one-sided to have it only impact what little competition there is against the monopoly and not have it impact the monopoly,” said Robert Herrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California. “The monopoly is exempted from the bill.”

Earlier this year, a federal jury found Live Nation and Ticketmaster violated antitrust laws and monopolized part of the primary ticketing market.

Live Nation Executive Vice President Dan Wall disputed the broader characterization of the company as a monopoly during a May interview with CBC.

“What the verdict says is that we have monopolized 20% of the primary ticketing market, not the whole thing,” Wall said. “I don’t call that a monopoly, and I’m actually confident that over time the courts won’t call that a monopoly.”

Haney calls the current ticketing system a scam and says AB 1720 is a necessary first step toward addressing a much more complicated pricing problem.

“This is happening at small theaters, big venues like Chase [Center in San Francisco] and festivals,” Haney said. “We have to put an end to it.”

Haney said that if a resale cap proves effective for smaller venues, lawmakers could consider expanding similar protections to larger events in the future.

AB 1720 has passed three Senate policy committees. The bill could reach the Senate floor later this month, although Haney acknowledged that advancing it to that stage may be difficult.