Consumer groups are worried that Massachusetts event-goers will face “fewer protections and higher fees” after Gov. Maura Healey signed into law new restrictions on ticket sales and transfers, which backers instead contend will help prevent exorbitant markup by scalpers.
Healey on Wednesday approved a sweeping economic development bill that includes a suite of reforms to how tickets for concerts and other popular events are sold here, some of which had drawn scrutiny from groups that claimed the language as drafted would give more power to major sellers like Ticketmaster.
The new law requires platforms to clearly disclose ticket prices online, and it bans the use of automated ticket purchasing software often known as “bots.”
It also allows any “theatrical exhibition, public show or public amusement or exhibition” to limit a ticket’s transferability after purchase as long as the restrictions are “clearly and conspicuously provided to the consumer” before the sale and the customer acknowledges receipt of that information.
Deirdre Cummings, the legislative and consumer programs director at MASSPIRG, called that latter portion “anti-consumer language.”
“When you buy concert, sports or other event tickets, you should be able to do whatever you want with them — including re-selling them or giving them to friends or family. Ticket sellers should have no right to prevent us from transferring our own tickets on our own terms. Requiring event tickets to be transferable is both a key consumer protection and common sense,” Cummings said Wednesday. “The big winners here are the big ticket sellers, not the sports fans or concert goers.”
Supporters of the language, however, contended that it simply adds transparency to a practice that already exists.
Some artists — like Pearl Jam, which performed at Fenway Park in September — prohibit most tickets to their concerts from being transferred, aiming to ensure fans can gain access at face value instead of competing with scalpers who would resell tickets at a high markup.
Backers say the language newly on the books adds clearer disclosure requirements at the time of purchase, but does not otherwise authorize a practice that had been forbidden.
“The only thing I see being changed is if you do get a ticket that’s non-transferable, it’s going to be displayed better,” said Sen. Barry Finegold, the lead Senate negotiator on the package. He later added, “I don’t see much change for 95 to 99% of how tickets are done.”
Finegold defended the transferability language as a way to add clarity for buyers and limit the ability of scalpers to resell certain high-demand tickets.
“The real driving force behind this is there have been some acts like Noah Kahan, Taylor Swift [and] Billie Eilish that don’t want their tickets to be driven up. They want their fans to get the tickets,” he said. “You can sell them back [to the original marketplace]so it’s not like you’re stuck with the ticket, but they want to get away [from] the tickets being marked up two, three, four times.”
Representatives from MASSPIRG, the National Consumers League, Consumer Action, the Consumer Federation of America and the Sports Fan Coalition wrote to Healey on Monday urging her to spike the ticket transfer language. They argued the proposal would effectively “codify into law anti-consumer event ticket sales practices and further entrench Live Nation Entertainment’s (LNE) monopoly on the live event industry.”
Chamber of Progress, a tech industry association, also made an unsuccessful push urging Healey to rethink the ticket resale provisions.
“This language empowers Live Nation to bury anti-transferrability provisions in terms and conditions that fans often quickly click through in their eagerness to purchase tickets to the next great event,” the group said in its own letter to Healey last week. “Worse, Live Nation could use ticket terms to force purchases to resell tickets exclusively on their own platform, further entrenching their monopoly position in the live events ecosystem.”
Todd O’Boyle, the organization’s senior director of technology, urged lawmakers to “fix this anti-fan mistake” when the 2025-2026 term begins.
Cummings told the State House News Service her only concern is the transferability language, not the measures calling for price transparency or banning the use of bots.
She added that consumer advocates did not sound the alarm about the provisions before they reached Healey’s desk because they did not know about them ahead of time. Legislative negotiators unveiled the 319-page compromise bill — which differs in some sections from the versions that originally cleared the House and Senate — the evening of Nov. 12, and the package then won House and Senate approval on Nov. 14.
In their letter to Healey, the consumer groups pointed to an analysis from the Sports Fan Coalition that found Massachusetts fans saved $21 million buying tickets on secondary markets between 2017 and 2024.
“The sole concern here, which is the biggest consumer protection, is the transferability of the tickets. It’s shown that if the tickets are transferable, overall, ticket prices go down as there’s more options for consumers on what they do with those tickets,” Cummings said. “You bought the ticket, you should be able to do what you want with the ticket.”
Before Healey signed the bill, activists argued that its language would conflict with Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s position in a multi-state and U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit she joined against ticketing giant Live Nation.
They said the cases focus in part on “SafeTix,” a technology that prosecutors allege prevents Live Nation tickets from being transferred on competing resale platforms.
The consumer groups warned that the ticket resale language in the economic development bill would “weaken the AG’s case by suggesting that Massachusetts has tacitly approved these monopolistic practices.”
“By endorsing SafeTix’s restrictive practices through this legislation, Massachusetts would be the first state to enact a policy that effectively blesses LNE’s anti-competitive practices,” they wrote. “This would be a troubling precedent that would undermine General Campbell’s ongoing efforts to curb monopolistic behavior in the industry.”
Some other states have pursued disclosure requirements on ticket non-transferability, according to Finegold.
“You have to focus on the precedent and what has happened,” he said. “If you talk to a lot of Noah Kahan fans, they were able to go to the shows this summer and didn’t have to pay exorbitant prices.”
