A dramatic shift in favor of Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s preferred ticket transfer regulations under consideration by the Massachusetts Senate this week is drawing considerable resistance from consumer advocates, who say the carve-out will harm ticket buyers, and supercharge that company’s alleged monopoly power.
What’s more, they say, is the proposed legislation would provide legal approval for systems and restrictions that the state itself is currently suing Live Nation/Ticketmaster over along with the Department of Justice and 40 other state Attorneys General.
“The Massachusetts legislature appears poised to do a confusing, last-minute about-face on a bill that started out pro-fan,but has now morphed into a vehicle for Ticketmaster to further dominate the marketplace,” says John Breyault of the National Consumer’s League of the legislation, which includes a small sub-section related to ticketing buried among a more than 300-page economic development bill.
“This new language has nothing to do with economic development and everything to do with helping Ticketmaster entrench its monopoly on live events in the Commonwealth,” he added.
Before this week, Massachusetts lawmakers had approved two versions of the language related to ticketing within the House and Senate versions of the massive economic development bill initially sponsored by Governor Maura Healey. The Senate version included some regulations on ticketing, but none involved ticket format or transfer rules. The House version had significant protections for consumer rights to use or transfer tickets by requiring freely-transferable formats be made at the time of initial sale, similar to laws which exist in neighboring New York and Connecticut.
But the conference committee took its own path in reconciling the bills for final approval this week, inserting entirely new language which allows for any transfer restrictions to be placed on tickets, largely through mobile-only ticketing systems like Ticketmaster’s “SafeTix.” The only requirement put in place for an event operator locking tickets to one chosen marketplace is that consumers be made aware of the practice while they are buying the tickets. They are given no legal avenue to opt out.
Requests for comment sent to the members of the committee which so dramatically changed the language of that particular section of the bill on their motivation for doing so both Wednesday and Thursday have not received a response as of Thursday afternoon.
“Massachusetts lawmakers have fallen victim to Live Nation’s relentless state campaign to crush the resale ticketing market,” says Diana Moss of the Progressive Policy Institute, who has been strongly critical of the growing movement by companies like Ticketmaster using restrictive technology to harm consumer choice and competition in the marketplace. “The transferability provision in the bill is a bait and switch for ticket buyers. The reality is that there is no transferability because when ticket buyers are forced to Ticketmaster’s monopoly platform, SafeTix, they won’t be getting any tickets unless they agree up front to the transfer restrictions. Good luck with that.”
SafeTix, Ticketmaster’s version of the sort of transfer-locked system enabled by the proposed new regulation in Massachusetts, is itself directly challenged as a tool of Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s alleged monopoly on ticketing as a part of the DOJ’s lawsuit filed earlier this year.
FURTHER READING | Ticketmaster SafeTix Take Central Role in DOJ’s Monopoly Lawsuit |
SafeTix, the DOJ argues, is a prime example of how “Ticketmaster deploys its vast power and network to protect its monopoly,” according to the amended complaint filed last week along with the announcement that ten additional states were joining in the lawsuit seeking to break up the entertainment giant.
“Ticketmaster has added SafeTix to its suite of products and services in a manner that protects its position in primary ticketing, expands its position in secondary ticketing, and undercuts the ability of rival ticketers to compete in either aspect of ticketing,” it continued.
It is unclear to what extent, if passed, the legal approval of such systems by the Massachusetts legislature would interfere with that lawsuit, which Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell joined on behalf of the Commonwealth and Governor Healey when it was initially filed.
A member of AG Campbell’s staff declined to comment for TicketNews at this time on the matter.
“Lawmakers shouldn’t disagree with their own Attorney General,” says Brian Hess of the Sports Fans Coalition, which recently published data highlighting the significant savings that consumers can find buying tickets on resale marketplaces. “The proposed law would codify a monopolistic business practice and completely go against what the Attorney General is trying to accomplish on behalf of the people of Massachusetts [by joining the Live Nation/Ticketmaster antitrust lawsuit.”
According to SFC research, those savings average $30 per ticket over primary market face values for tickets purchased on resale marketplaces over the past eight years. Red Sox fans have saved $7.4 million, followed closely by the $6.5 million saved by Celtics fans. Bruins fans saved $5.9 million, with Patriots fans saving $1.1 million during that span.
“Transferability saves fans money,” he continued. “In Massachusetts alone, fans have saved $21 million [since 2017] because of transferability. On average, consumers in states that protect transfer save double over consumers in states that don’t.”
The last-second shift by a state lawmaking body largely mirrors other similar 11th hour efforts on behalf of Ticketmaster-Live Nation legislative agenda items at both the state and federal level in recent years.
In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis vetoed a controversial Ticketmaster-backed bill after consumer advocates pulled their support when amendments that would have provided better consumer protections against anti-competitive practices were removed from the bill just before its passage. California legislation aimed at reforming ticket buying in favor of stronger consumer protections died earlier this year after a pro-Live Nation faction added amendments to the bill that would have enhanced rather than eliminated the alleged monopoly hold of that company on the market.
Even more brazenly, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) attempted to break a stalemate over the ticketing legislation at the federal level by attaching his Live Nation-friendly “Fans First Act” bill as an amendment to a “must-pass” FAA legislative package otherwise totally unrelated to ticketing or entertainment in any fashion.
For Massachusetts consumers, the main hope against seeing Ticketmaster given free reign to lock down their tickets by weaponizing terms and conditions at the point of initial sale most likely lies in Governor Maura Healey. While the Democrat is highly unlikely to veto the entire economic development bill should it pass, she would have the ability to strike down specific portions of it by using a line-item veto power to send the specific issue back to the lawmakers for reconsideration.
“The conference report’s language would put Governor Healey in the awkward situation of signing off on a law that conflicts with the position Attorney General Campbell took when she signed Massachusetts on to [the DOJ antitrust lawsuit]Breyault says. “Governor Healey should use her line-item veto to consign this new monopolist-friendly language to the circular file.”
“This Governor was also once an Attorney General,” Hess added in concurrence to the hope Gov. Healey would follow that path. “I don’t think she would have appreciated lawmakers doing this to an effort she was leading in that role. We hope the Governor will line veto this and recommend lawmakers fix the problem.”
For Moss, the current mess in Massachusetts only further illustrated the need for the Department of Justice to continue with its efforts to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster to put an end to this ongoing effort to gain legal approval for its anti-competitive practices. While Moss and others feel strongly that the bipartisan support for legal action against the alleged monopoly will survive the upcoming change in administration, Live Nation itself has already seen executives sharing their confidence that a Trump AG will let the matter go.
“The convoluted transferability provisions in the Massachusetts bill highlight the importance of DOJ’s antitrust suit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” she says. “Only when DOJ prevails, and obtains a remedy that would “defang” anticompetitive tactics like SafeTix, would misguided, anti-consumer state-level ticketing legislation be neutralized.”