The rules around ticket purchases in Massachusetts have just changed, and not everyone is on the same page. Gov. Maura Healey is controlling the choices for ticket resale through a recently added provision in the state’s economic development law. According to a recent CBS Boston article, the regulation requires fans to sell their tickets on the same platform they bought, which may result in fewer people visiting third-party selling websites.
However, the action has angered consumer advocates. “If I can’t go, I can’t give it to my friends or family, and I can’t resell it to anybody I want, so it’s really harming fans,” MASSPIRG’s Deirdre Cummings told CBS Boston. However, an executive from Live Nation, the parent firm of Ticketmaster, has endorsed the bill, claiming that it is a response to ticket scalping. “It’s about whether the 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,” asserted Dan Wall, Live Nation’s vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs.
The massive ticket resale company StubHub has publicly denounced the measure as anticompetitive, urging Congress to reconsider it. In the backdrop, client dissatisfaction is also growing. Shawn Eagle, a disgruntled ticket buyer, told CBS Boston, “That opportunity is between those two customers; if someone else wants to attend that performance, they’re prepared to pay that market pricing for it. Ticketmaster is not required to be involved in that.
The question of how this statute relates to consumer rights is made much more complex. The regulation presents itself as a fan protection measure since it requires ticket sellers to disclose their prices and prohibits automated ticket-purchasing software. Cummings is worried about the control over secondary market pricing, pointing out that “Ticketmaster will buy it at a lower face value,” and then “sell it at a higher one,” which could lock prices at an elevated plateau. However, the devil’s in the details, or in this case the fine print of the ticket.
The fan’s experience, entangled in red tape, is a constant thread in the ongoing discussion about the morality and practicality of ticket reselling. The chorus of support and opposition is expected to rise as Massachusetts works through the implementation of these new rules. The stage is prepared for how this legal drama unfolds in actual situations, a story that every ticket holder and buyer is unwittingly a part of, as WPRI has pointed out, with Gov. Healey’s signature already dried on the measure.
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