On May 18, Rob Meyerhoff published “A Legal Ticket Thicket: Two Proposed Laws in California Impacting the Ticket Resale Market” in The Recorder. The following is an excerpt:
Ticket sellers, resellers, and consumers in California should be aware of two bills making their way through the legislature that could vastly change how secondary ticket markets work in California. One aims to end speculative selling and the use of bots in buying tickets, and the other seeks to cap the markups ticket resellers can impose. Both would impose new requirements on ticket resellers and the platforms they use and expose them to greater risk of liability.
Assembly Bill 1349 would eliminate the ability of online ticket resellers to sell tickets that they do not own at the time of listing. These “speculative ticketing” resellers list tickets online, and if someone purchases the listed tickets, only then will the sellers buy the tickets and transfer them to the purchaser. AB 1349 would change this dynamic by requiring ticket resellers to have actual or “constructive possession” of any tickets they list for sale online, meaning that the reseller (a) “has fully paid for the ticket,” (b) “holds a legally enforceable right to receive delivery of the ticket,” and (c) “has received confirmation of purchase or assignment from the original ticket seller, event presenter, or venue operator.” And any resale listing must include the section, row, and seat number of each ticket, as well as the face price printed on the ticket.
AB 1349 would permit both government enforcement actions and civil suits. Certain state and local agencies could bring claims for violations, with penalties of not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) for certain violations, and each ticket purchased or offered for sale in violation of the law would constitute a separate violation. And these civil penalties would apply to both ticket resellers and ticket resale marketplaces. In addition, individual consumers could bring civil suits against not only the ticket reseller but also the original seller and the ticket resale marketplace for violations of the statute for two times the contracted price of the ticket, as well as expenses for attempting to attend the event and reasonable attorneys’ fees and court costs.
For the full article, click here.