Kathleen Philips will be presenting on the panel “Ticketing Lawsuits and Legal Trends” at Ticket Summit July 15-17 at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. An attorney with expertise and years of experience in working with the ticketing industry, she will have much to share about the subject.
Philips, General Counsel for FanSnap, a search engine for live event tickets, has been busy preparing her presentation with fellow panelists, and she plans with the group to cover three major areas of legal concerns with secondary ticketing.
“First, we’ll cover recent developments in taxation, in both local taxation as well as [on the] internet. Second, we have an antitrust expert, James Hurwitz, giving a process overview of the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. And finally, we’ll be [discussing] recent legislative developments [with] a focus on helping [participants] to understand what they need to do to get involved. In addition to our legislative overview, we’ll give tips to help brokers get involved in their own jurisdiction to get the right legislation in place,” Philips said, noting some recent examples in Florida, Minnesota and New York in which brokers worked together to effect change in legislation that allowed for the secondary market to thrive. Her hope is that discussion of these many facets of the issue will add up to a take-away message “that working together, we can achieve a lot. It’s incumbent on all to get their voices heard.”
She is looking forward to empowering brokers with the information and tools they need to work with their legislators. “Our focus will be on motivating ticket brokers to get involved and giving guidance as to how they can do that, whether that [includes] getting involved in local lobbying efforts in their state, writing letters to congressional representatives or working with other government officials to educate them about the industry.”
In the process, the panel will be working to educate brokers on the legal and legislative options available to them. Philips is sure that the vast combined experience of panel members will allow not only for lively discussion of the topic but also for the provision of new information vital to ticketing professionals.
Philips comes to Ticket Summit with a wealth of legal experience, much of this in the consumer products and ticketing industries. Prior to her position at FanSnap, she acted as General Counsel for HotWire, Pure Digital Technologies and, most recently, StubHub. Philips also has consulted for consumer-focused internet companies such as TripIt and Linden Lab (Second Life).
Dedicated to working on the legal side of the ticketing business for years, the attorney has found great satisfaction in her move over to FanSnap; as she explains, “I love the ticketing business. FanSnap’s service brings together all the information from ticket providers. It’s a great service. For the same reason I believe in the free market for the [ticketing industry], I believe that FanSnap’s service and aggregation of ticket information throughout the web provides fans the best opportunity to find the best value for the tickets they are looking for”.
