New York Pivot Could Hand Ticketmaster a Win—and Push Fans Back to the Shadows

When New York Sen. James Skoufis filed Senate Bill S 276 in January, consumer groups cheered its promise of lifetime bans for bot users, full transparency on the dirty business of “ticket holdbacks” and a 10 percent lid on the practice, and a ban on exclusive deals between venues and a single ticketing company.

Four months later, Skoufis and Assemblymember Ron Kim appear to have abandoned that bill entirely. In its place, they are pushing the newly announced S 8221/A 8659 – a bill whose marquee feature is a key piece of Live Nation Entertainment’s legislative agenda: a price cap meaning concert and Broadway tickets could not legally be resold for more than face value if an artist or its “authorized agent” opts in, and every seller would face a hard 25 percent limit on total service fees.

Gone are almost all of the ticketing reforms that consumer advocates had applauded and Skoufis himself has pushed for over multiple years in the wake of his scathing report on the business in 2021. But the legislators seem keen on blitzing the new bill in the short time remaining in New York’s legislative session, which closes at the end of June.

“The current, abusive system which governs how New Yorkers access live entertainment tickets affects the relationship between fans and the artists, athletes, and performers they admire,” said Senator Skoufis in a press release touting the new bill. “Buying a ticket 200% over face value, or paying a fee larger than the cost of the ticket itself simply isn’t possible for the average fan. We have the opportunity to build a ticketing structure that protects consumers–everyday New Yorkers who want to enrich their lives or the lives of their families by seeing live performances–and we have an obligation to fight as hard as we can to make that possible in these next three weeks.”

A stunning 180° Turn

Live Nation Entertainment, which the DOJ and a huge majority of Attorneys General across the country accuse of running an illegal monopoly in a massive lawsuit playing out in Manhattan’s Southern District federal courtroom, has lobbied for face-value resale rules for years.

If S 8221 passes, the company—or the artists it controls through 360° deals—could simply “opt in” to a face-value mandate and outlaw every rival marketplace that allows market-price resales.

That outcome sits uneasily with New York’s own role as a plaintiff in the DOJ case, which argues Live Nation routinely uses its dominance in primary ticketing to strangle competition.

Consumer advocates warn the new limits will almost certainly do more harm than good.

“Capping ticket resale prices might sound like a win for fans—but it’s a fast track to more fraud,” said John Breyault, vice-president of the National Consumers League. “In countries with caps, ticket scams run nearly four times higher. Fans get pushed to Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and sketchy overseas sites where scammers thrive.”

Breyault added that if Albany proceeds, it “must also boost enforcement resources for Attorney General Letitia James. Without it, fans will be left defenseless in a growing black market.”

“Face Value” Has No Meaning

One problematic aspect of the proposed price cap is that there is no such thing as face value in the modern ticketing ecosystem. Prices can and do fluctuate wildly throughout the sale process – and that’s directly through the primary box office, before any resale considerations are even in play. The modern “slow ticketing” system is largely built on the idea of charging maximum market prices during moments of peak demand, then shifting the unsold inventory at lower prices if the market is soft.

Such practices have led to enormous complaints from fans – who increasingly feel ripped off by “platinum” and surged prices at the box office, only to find the same or very similar seats available for a fraction of the price as the show date approaches. It has also led to a significant uptick in show and even whole tour cancellations when demand fails to meet the jacked-up prices.

Read More: Beyonce fans feel scammed after paying surged prices for tour as prices are slashed.

According to the language of this bill, the price caps are defined entirely by the first price paid by the ticket buyer – which can apparently be anything that the event operator chooses to charge at any point. The only rule about price surging is that a ticket price can’t change while tickets are in the buyer’s “cart”.

And if you buy tickets and can’t attend? The maximum price that you can charge for them is the initial price paid. That means that consumers who purchase tickets and can’t attend an event will be incapable of doing anything but losing money in the end due to fees charged by the resale marketplace – more on that later.

Double-Dipping and Harmful Price Fixing: Back on the Menu

One of the more egregious aspects of the changes from one bill to another was the removal from the new bill language that had banned a marketplace from profiting multiple times from the sale and resale of the same tickets. Under the January proposal, companies like Ticketmaster that function both as primary and resale marketplaces selling and reselling the same tickets multiple times would only be allowed to take fees and profit on the initial sale.

Now, that language is gone.

This means that, hypothetically, this bill would make it possible that one company could be empowered to have a monopoly over the primary box office ticket sales for an event, then extend that monopoly into all subsequent “resale” transactions if it adheres to the “face value” rules. It can set whatever prices it wishes for those sales, and collect fees every time.

Another provision that was stripped: a rule that would have banned any resale marketplace from setting a minimum price that can be charged for a ticket – known as a “floor” price. Why would this matter in a price-capped resale ecosystem? Because that means that if the event organizer has a lot of unsold tickets for the event and wants to drop prices, they can do that themselves, while preventing consumers who have bought tickets and changed plans from doing the same with their own tickets listed for resale.

An example of how this would work for a consumer in New York under the new law:

You (the New York ticket-buying consumer) get in on a presale for next year’s hottest tour, and want to catch it at Madison Square Garden – an iconic spot! You get in through the queue! Tickets are wildly expensive, but hey, that’s what everybody’s paying – so you cough up $1,000 (which includes about $200 in fees back to Ticketmaster, because those “all-in” prices required in New York since 2022 still have fees).

Six months later, the show’s weeks away and now you’ve got a work trip that you can’t get out of. So you list them for resale. MSG is a Ticketmaster building, and your favorite artist “doesn’t want you to pay scalper prices” so they have opted in for the “face value” cap marketplace – which is also (exclusively, and without competition from anywhere but the black market) Ticketmaster.

You already paid Ticketmaster 25% fees on that first sale. Now, to resell them, you have to list at your price paid – $1,000. But Ticketmaster is going to take another 25% cut – which means if your tickets that you can’t use sell, you walk away with $750… losing $250 just for having your plans change because Ticketmaster gets to charge you fees on both transactions.

But wait – it gets worse! There’s a ton of tickets left unsold from the box office, and now the seats right next to yours are listed for sale for $300 each – all-in. Think you can change your price to $300 to at least make back that much? Sorry – Ticketmaster is making the minimum asking price allowed for your tickets to also be the exact price you paid – a “price floor”. These were banned in the January bill, but they’ve been removed in this late blitz.

So now your tickets won’t get you back 75% of what you paid for them – they won’t sell at all. Because Ticketmaster and the event operator have the legal right to do all of this.

If you don’t think that’s likely – it’s already happening on resale marketplaces that are also primary marketplaces. It’s not a major consumer issue only because competition exists where the promoter has no control over the resale price. This bill would eliminate that competition for New York events.

Further Reading: Tanking Tulsa Date Shows Springsteen Using Floor Pricing on Tour
Pearl Jam Slash Prices And Activate Price Floors as Poor Sales Linger

Lost Without Explanation: Bot Penalties, Holdback Ceiling, Exclusivity Reforms

Back in January Sen. Skoufis touted the earlier bill’s antitrust bite:

“New York is the entertainment capital of the world, and ensuring fans have ready, affordable, and fair access to tickets remains a priority of mine.” —press release for S 276, Jan. 8

One key in the January proposal would have voided exclusive primary-ticketing contracts and imposed per-ticket civil penalties on anyone who used bots or failed to report them. Another measure would have required both full transparency on the practice of “holdbacks” – holding back significant percentages of tickets from initial sale to create a perception of scarcity at the box office – as well as capping the total amount of held-back tickets at 10% of the total inventory.

The primary exclusivity ban is gone entirely, as is much of the language strengthening the anti-“bot” enforcement. And while transparency for holdbacks is still in place – arguably the main thing that companies like Live Nation will fight in this new legislation – the 10% cap on the practice is also gone. These changes leave many wondering why key competition fixes were sacrificed while a resale ceiling that benefits the incumbent giant took center stage.

What remains—and what’s gone

Still in the bill	Stripped out since January
• Ban on speculative listings until tickets are in hand and publicly on sale. • Expanded refunds for cancellations and chronic postponements. • Season-ticket protections.	• Lifetime license revocation, per-ticket fines, and whistle-blower bounty for bot use. • 10 % ceiling on ticket holdbacks. • Ban on exclusive ticketing contracts. • Prohibition on “double-dip” fees when a platform handles both the primary and resale transaction. • Prohibition on resale price floors.

Clock is ticking

All of New York’s current ticket protections expire on June 30. Lawmakers have one month to reconcile consumer protection with competitive balance. If S 8221 advances without restoring the deleted antitrust tools—or without funding AG enforcement—critics fear fans may soon find the safest place to buy a ticket is back in the alleys of the internet where fraudsters, not regulators, set the rules.