Fans hoping to see Paul McCartney’s highly anticipated tour kickoff at the Santa Barbara Bowl Friday evening are finding themselves caught between impossible choices: gamble hundreds or even thousands of dollars on tickets the venue says it won’t honor, or give up on seeing the former Beatle entirely.
Santa Barbara Bowl CEO Rick Boller this week warned that any tickets purchased through resale marketplaces — including widely used platforms like StubHub — will be deemed invalid at the gate. The warning comes despite the fact that ticket resale is perfectly legal under California law. Instead, the concert is subject to the venue and promoter’s use of AXS’ mobile-only ticketing system, which locks tickets to the original buyer and disables consumer transfer rights.
“All tickets for the September 26 show were distributed through a verified registration system,” Boller told the Santa Barbara Independent, noting that each purchase was capped at two tickets and tied to a name and ID. “We didn’t sell any tickets that would allow for transfer, those aren’t valid, and they won’t be honored.”
The result is predictable: virtually no tickets are available through safe, regulated resale marketplaces. As of Friday afternoon, TicketNews found zero tickets available via AXS’ “Fair” system – which the venue leadership insists is the only legal manner to access tickets. StubHub showed just one available ticket to Paul McCartney’s Friday show, listed at more than $7,000. By contrast, McCartney’s Monday night performance at Acrisure Arena in Palm Springs — just three days later and also in California — had resale tickets beginning at $470 on the same platform.
That sharp disparity highlights what happens when transfer restrictions strangle supply: fans desperate for tickets are pushed away from marketplaces with consumer protections and into unsafe black markets, where fraud is rampant and refunds are far from guaranteed.
This week’s McCartney mess is hardly the first time AXS has used ticketing restrictions in this way. In 2023, the company issued locked, non-transferable tickets for Zach Bryan’s tour, even in states like Virginia and New York that had passed laws requiring transferable tickets be made available to consumers. TicketNews reported at the time that AEG/AXS “continued disregarding” those state protections, leaving fans vulnerable to the same kinds of issues now surfacing in Santa Barbara.
California legislators have attempted to put similar consumer ticket rights protection in place in recent years – but have faced fierce opposition from companies like Ticketmaster and parent Live Nation Entertainment as well as AXS, who spin such consumer control over tickets they’ve purchased as a negative.
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SafeTix – the Ticketmaster system for locking tickets to their proprietary mobile-only system similar to AXS’s “FAIR” infastructure – was specifically cited as a tool designed to extend that company’s its dominance in the primary market through to secondary marketplaces in the massive antitrust lawsuit filed against Live Nation in 2024.
On top of the consumer risks, the Santa Barbara Bowl rollout has also raised questions about accessibility. In a letter to the Independent, fan Lucas Nadolskis described being shut out of the ticket sale entirely due to the AXS website’s incompatibility with screen readers used by blind consumers. By the time he was able to enlist help from a friend, the tickets were gone. “An inaccessible website doesn’t feel fair,” he wrote. “Companies that provide public services, like ticket vendors, have a responsibility to make their websites accessible.”
For fans, the bottom line is clear: resale is legal in California, but the Santa Barbara Bowl and AXS’ approach means those who missed out in the original lottery have been left with either impossible prices or unsafe purchasing options. And as Friday’s show approaches, the stark difference in availability and pricing between Santa Barbara and Palm Springs illustrates exactly who benefits when consumer choice is taken off the table — and it isn’t the fans.
