A bill that would limit the resale price of concert and live event tickets in California passed a key committee at the State Capitol today yesterday.
The bill would prohibit someone from reselling a ticket on a secondary market for more than 10 percent above the original price.
Democratic Assemblymember Matt Haney of San Francisco is the bill’s author. He says it’s needed to crack down on professional scalpers and online bots that buy tickets up as soon as they become available and then resell them for extreme markups.
"By limiting excessive markups, this bill will remove the financial incentive that drives large scale ticket scalping while still allowing everyday fans to resell tickets if they cannot attend and recover their costs."
Proponents say they bill’s an important consumer protection. But, the Consumer Federation of California opposes it. Robert Herrell with the Federation says the fact that Ticketmaster supports the change should give people pause.
"I’ll tell you what’s coo coo, what’s coo coo is having a monopoly wanting to secretly remove what little competition there is."
California is one of several states currently suing Ticketmaster and Live Nation for what it says are anticompetitive practices. They control around 80 percent of ticket sales for concerts.
The bill passed its first committee, the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, and Tourism. It faces two more committees in the Assembly.