North Carolina Lawmakers Consider Ticket Rights Protection Bill

North Carolina lawmakers are considering legislation that would eliminate restrictions on how or where consumers can resell event tickets, setting up a battle between supporters who call the measure consumer-friendly and opponents who argue it could hurt artists, venues and fans.

House Bill 598, which cleared a key House committee this week, would prohibit ticket issuers from forcing buyers to use a particular resale marketplace. The proposal also bans minimum or maximum resale prices, and it requires electronic tickets to be delivered promptly after sold. Its passage would bring North Carolina’s consumer ticket rights protections up to the standard set by states including Utah, Virginia, Illinois, Colorado, Connecticut and New York, which have similar bans on anti-competitive ticket transfer restrictions in place.

The delivery requirement would be an important and novel new protection, designed to ban the now common practice of companies like Ticketmaster delaying “delivery” of tickets until the last moment before an event, which opponents say is deliberately anti-competitive.

“This is a consumer protection bill that values the free market,” said Rep. David Willis, R-Union, one of the bill’s sponsors. “If you buy a ticket to a football game, a basketball game, a show, you have the right, as the owner of that product, to then turn around and choose which platform you resell that product.”

If the measure passes, secondary marketplaces such as SeatGeek, StubHub and Vivid Seats could find it easier to compete with Ticketmaster, the dominant platform in North Carolina’s professional sports and most major entertainment venues. Joe Freeman, SeatGeek’s vice president for government relations, told legislators that states with similar laws have “flourishing” live event industries.

Opponents threatened that the bill would result in artists avoiding performances in the state. Jake Burns, a Carolina Panthers and Charlotte FC executive, testified that the bill takes away rights from teams, artists and venues. He cited the Savannah Bananas — a popular touring baseball show team similar to the Harlem Globetrotters — as an example of an event that prohibits above-face-value resales in its ticketing agreements.

“It’s going to prevent us from attracting events to the state of North Carolina,” Burns said. It should be noted that the organization that employs Burns is a client of Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster itself has used this logic in its fight against legislation that would harm its standard business practices. In one notable instance, its lobbyists were successful in their efforts to strip requirements that ticket holdbacks be disclosed to the public by saying that tours would simply skip performances in Ontario or Toronto – the most populous province and city in the country.

Read More: Ontario Drops Ticket Transparency Measure Under Industry Pressure

Representatives of smaller venues echoed the Live Nation Entertainment-owned ticketing giant’s concerns, claiming that consumer transfer rights requirements would increase prices. “If you told me two months ago that I would be standing in opposition, shoulder to shoulder with Ticketmaster, I would have told you you were crazy,” said Nate MaGaha, executive director of Arts North Carolina, arguing the bill undermines the ability of arts organizations to “curb problems with speculative tickets and resale markups.”

Willis, however, believes the measure is about safeguarding buyers from excessive fees and resale limits. “They have full control over when the tickets go on sale, what the prices are and how they’re sold,” he said. “I think it’s our business to … protect the citizens of North Carolina.”

The bill must pass at least one chamber by Thursday’s crossover deadline to remain viable this session. If approved, it could reshape the state’s ticketing landscape by giving consumers more freedom in how they buy and sell their event admissions.