VA AG Urges Consumers to Report Zach Bryan Ticket Complaints

Virginia’s Office of the Attorney General confirmed that at least one consumer complaint has been received regarding last week’s Zach Bryan concert in Charlottesville. That concert reportedly did not allow tickets to be transferred freely by consumers who purchased them, which is a violation of state law in Virginia.

When contacted by TicketNews regarding the alleged violation of the state’s Ticket Resale Rights Act, a spokesperson for the AG’s office urged any consumers who purchased tickets that were not made transferrable by the event organizer to file a complaint. Such complaints will be considered for potential enforcement if the AG’s office determines them to be credible.

As TicketNews first reported last week, the potential penalties for the alleged violations of the state law are significant. Wednesday’s performance at John Paul Jones Arena may have had close to 15,000 tickets issued if it was sold out as promoters have claimed. Each issued ticket could constitute a violation of the law, which carries a penalty of $1,000-5,000 for each violation.

That would put Bryan, his management, and promoter AEG on the hook for as much as $73 million in penalties were the AG’s office to determine the complaints to be viable.

Passed in 2017, Virginia’s Ticket Resale Rights Act requires event operators to allow consumers the ability to use, give away, or sell tickets they’ve purchased without restriction. Specifically:

“No person that issues tickets for admission to an event shall issue any such ticket solely through a delivery method that substantially prevents the purchaser of the ticket from lawfully reselling the ticket on the internet ticketing platform of the ticket purchaser’s choice.”

Bryan’s tour, which was announced on the heels of his sharp rebuke of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, has been built on a platform of exclusive ticketing. All shows were routed to venues outside of Ticketmaster’s exclusive contracts system, ticketed by AXS, a subsidiary of fellow promotional giant AEG. Part of the singer’s alleged efforts to keep prices low involved the elimination of consumer ticket resale or transfer rights, locking the tickets to the AXS system where they would only be allowed to be moved via its own locked and value-capped resale system.

The problem with such a plan is that some states make such limits on consumer ticket transfer illegal – Virginia being one of them. Other shows on the tour have similar conflict with state laws in place. New York law prevents transfer restrictions, and has three shows on Bryan’s schedule – May 26 in the state capital Albany, as well as June 23 and 24 at Forest Hills Stadium. Immediately after those two shows are a pair of concerts at Colorado’s Red Rocks – another venue where state law bans restrictions on ticket transfer of this nature.

TicketNews has sent multiple requests for comment to tour promoter AEG, as well as Bryan’s management team asking for clarification on their ticket resale policy in states where they would be violating state law. No response has yet been received. It seems plausible at this time that they are planning to go ahead with their plans for restricted ticket transfer in spite of the state laws in place, effectively daring authorities to enforce the laws already on the books.

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Zach Bryan Tour Dates

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