Efforts by the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) to paint ticket resale as rife with fraud over the appearance of tickets to next year’s Oasis tour dates in North America before Friday’s presale are not only inaccurate – but indicative of a coordinated effort on behalf of Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster, according to StubHub.
“It is clear that Live Nation Entertainment -Ticketmaster and National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) have partnered to spread false information about ticket availability in an attempt to further their own policy agenda and create distrust in the secondary market,” says StubHub’s Laura Dooley, Global Head of Government Relations.
In a letter sent to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by the lobbying organization on October 2, StubHub and Vivid Seats were accused of “deceiving fans” due to the fact that “at least 9,000 fake tickets” were already listed for sale to the U.S. Oasis shows. No tickets could possibly be available for sale, the letter argued, indicating that all resale listings are by extension fraudulent and misleading.
As a result, the letter concluded, Congress must take action against ticket resale, holding a committee hearing upon its return from recess in November, and then by passing the Fans First Act – which NIVA has supported as part of the wider “Fix The Tix” Coalition.
However, the implication that no tickets were available to be listed on resale platforms prior to the first public presale after the letter was published is provably false. As is typically the case, there were presales held throughout the week for small, non-public groups before the wider presales kicked off.
An email shared with TicketNews from a Chicago Bears season ticket holder detailed one such presale – open to the club’s season ticket members that began on Monday, September 30.
It is almost certain that similar presales were held at every venue that Oasis is performing at for their 2025 stadium tour. Every U.S. stop on the tour is at a venue that is also home to an NFL franchise. But the venue lobbying group opted to take advantage of the lack of transparency around when and how tickets are distributed in its effort to score political points and headlines over the high profile tour.
Notably, Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment head Michael Rapino both boosted the NIVA effort through social media in hopes of amplifying the message condemning ticket resale as rife with fraud, despite the fact that Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s corporate leadership would have been well aware of the fact that tickets were absolutely available for purchase by some prior to the letter.
“There is a lack of transparency around how tickets are allocated, sold, and distributed in the primary ticket market, preventing consumers from understanding how the ticket industry works and allowing dominant players to manipulate the marketplace,” StubHub’s Dooley explained. “Tickets may appear on resale marketplaces before public on-sale because many industry stakeholders, such as season ticket holders, sponsors, and professional resellers, receive early access – this was the case with Oasis.”
“At StubHub, our top priority is getting fans into events,” she continued. “We prohibit the sale of speculative tickets and call on Ticketmaster to open lines of communication, offer ticket verification services, and do their part to better protect fans.”
NIVA and Ticketmaster both pushed back against StubHub’s claims in statements to TicketNews that doubled down on their assertion that nefarious resellers were posting tickets for sale that they had no ownership of.
“StubHub is lying,” the statement from Ticketmaster says. “Oasis tickets were offered for sale on StubHub immediately after the North American dates and venues were announced, before any onsale, and before anyone had rights to particular seats – as the listings explicitly claimed. The season ticket holder excuse is baseless. For the shows in Pasadena, Toronto, Mexico City and New Jersey, no one had season ticket holder rights to receive tickets. Even in Chicago, no one had advance rights to the particular seats listed for sale on StubHub.”
“After 36 hours of deliberation following the revelation of at least 4,354 fake Oasis tickets on their platform, StubHub should have taken decisive action to protect consumers,” says Stephen Parker, NIVA Executive Director. “Instead, all we got were excuses. On Wednesday, 666 “tickets” for two new Oasis shows appeared on StubHub less than 40 minutes after the events were announced. How could those possibly be real tickets already in the possession of sellers? This seems highly unlikely, not just for these “tickets,” but for most of the Oasis listings on their platform prior to tickets going on sale.”
NIVA was born during the COVID-19 pandemic, largely as a vehicle for advocating on behalf of the Save Our Stages act, which funneled more than $16 billion in federal grant money towards supporting event promoters, venues, and other live event businesses shut down by crowd restrictions. Since that time, it has supported a mixed bag of initiatives, sometimes pushing back against Live Nation Entertainment’s enormous market power, but in many instances serving as an important and conveniently independent voice on behalf of initiatives that the corporate behemoth also supports.
NIVA is one of the key supporters of the so-called “Fix The Tix” coalition, which backs the Fans First Act that is effectively a rehash of Live Nation Entertainment’s specific outlined legislative priorities. That coalition, which includes multiple entities with significant ties to former Live Nation head Irving Azoff, also triggered letters from hundreds of artists – many of whom are represented by Azoff or other Live Nation allies like Red Light Management’s Coran Capshaw – asking for Fans First to be passed.
Even the save Our Stages Act wound up being a significant boon to the corporation, with some $19 million found to be hoovered up by subsidiaries of Live Nation Entertainment – hardly “independent” venues that the legislation was intended to support with taxpayer dollars.
StubHub is not the first organization to point out NIVA’s convenient support of Live Nation’s public relations efforts as the company fights off a Department of Justice effort to break it up for alleged violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. TicketNetwork referred to the lobbying group as part of a “coordinated industry effort to paint any platform not subject to direct artist management or promoter control as offering ‘fake’ or ‘counterfeit’ tickets in response to an earlier effort to get resale tickets removed from the Yelp website.
