A lengthy hearing before the House Regulated Industries Committee in Georgia became the latest battleground between Live Nation/Ticketmaster and its venue partners and legislators looking to introduce important consumer protections over tickets they’ve purchase this week. The hearing saw the entertainment giant and its allies arguing that they need to be able to control tickets without any input from lawmakers, who are considering a bill that would ban certain restrictions to use, transfer, or resell tickets without the original sellers permission.
HB 398, introduced by Republican Scott Hilton, would bar ticket sellers or venues from imposing terms that would ban resale or transfer, with certain limitations. Similar legislation has been passed in multiple states – New York, Connecticut, Virginia, Colorado and Utah among them – and are under consideration as part of the broader reform package promised by the federal BOSS and SWIFT Act introduced earlier this year in the U.S. House and recently introduced in the senate.
Hilton says that use of technology by companies like Ticketmaster to restrict consumer ticket rights create monopolies and drive up ticket prices, which is the reason he is pushing for the important reform.
“Right now, the primary ticket sales throughout the United States are almost exclusively through one provider,” Hilton said. “Consumers are subject to terms and conditions, technologies and fee structures that attempt to limit the resale from a primary ticket holder to someone else. Due to these exclusive agreements, they’re trying to limit consumer behavior, consumer choice, and ultimately, competition.”
But a cadre of industry insiders, led by Live Nation itself, is pushing back in hopes of retaining its ability to cancel or restrict consumer rights at their unfettered discretion. [Transfer restrictions and order cancellations are] “the only thing that’s going to protect from fans really being gouged” by nefarious ticket resellers, says Peter Conlon, chairman of Live Nation Georgia.
Ronald Gaither, a lawyer speaking on behalf of the Atlanta Braves, Falcons, Hawks, and Atlanta United – which have ties to Live Nation Entertainment through corporate giant Liberty Media – pushed for the continued legal interpretation that a ticket is a revocable license rather than something the buyer owns – thereby eliminating any rights they might claim to use or resell them at their own discretion rather than the event operator or ticket provider.
The clear disagreement between the bill’s author and the giant corporations looking to continue their current domination of the business was noted by committee chair Alan Powell, also a Republican, with plans for the issue to be revisited again at a later hearing.
“As y’all can see, it’s pretty well divided right now,” he said. “And when I talk about division, it doesn’t necessarily mean that something can’t be hammered out for the benefit of the consumers of Georgia. I don’t know what we can do, quite honestly, except on the local level. Because so much of this industry is being handled from out of state that we can’t reach. That it would take federal law, quite honestly, to deal with a lot of this.”
