The Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) recently starting working to take advantage of a North Carolina ticket resale law that allows venues to bar online resale of tickets for their upcoming events.
Under this law, the venue must first file a notice with the secretary of state and pay a required fee before online secondary ticket resale can be banned. Once the legal criteria are met, the venue has the right to demand that all tickets on the secondary market be removed. As of today, the DPAC is only in the beginning stages of this process.
North Carolina is one of only two states with such a law on the books. If a venue does not object to ticket resale, North Carolina law allows for unfettered use of secondary ticketing Web sites. While it does not appear as if the majority of North Carolina venues are currently choosing to implement the ban, some of the state’s larger and more popular venues, such as the DPAC, have.
From an account offered by the DPAC to the North Carolina News & Observer, it appears that enforcement of the online ticketing ban falls solely on the shoulders of the participating venue. The DPAC’s general manager Bob Klaus explains the process to the paper, saying, “Once we file a prohibition, we send emails everywhere we see someone reselling tickets for that show. The vast majority give no acknowledgement, but we still see that show drop off their site. ”
While the DPAC has experienced success in preventing tickets from being sold on the online secondary market, it remains to be seen if other large North Carolina venues will follow suit. Currently, according to the News & Observer, the DPAC’s blanket anti-online resale policy is the only one in the state. Some other venues, such as The Carolina Theatre, have implemented a ban on only their more popular events.
While the law offers venues the option of taking action against secondary online ticket sales, the massive amount of secondary ticketing Web sites makes it nearly impossible for a venue to remove all tickets from the Internet. But, Klaus and the DPAC promise to remain vigilant.
“Every week another four sites we’ve never heard of come up,” Klaus tells the News & Observer. “We reach out to each one about the reselling proposition . . . It will be interesting to see if there’s more push-back as we move forward.”
