California could become the next state in the U.S. to put a limit on the price of resale concert tickets. Today (Feb. 5), California state assemblyman Matt Haney introduced a spot bill titled the California Fans First Act that would cap the price of a resold concert ticket to no more than 10% above the ticket’s original face value.
The bill – labeled AB 1720 – would make it illegal to resell a concert, theater, comedy or other live entertainment ticket (sports are not included) at a price higher than face value (the cost of the ticket plus fees from the primary ticketing source) plus 10% for shows taking place in California.
The bill “is very simple. It is enforceable. It is common sense and it is fair to both fans and artists,” Haney tells Billboard. “It is about the astronomical cost of resale that is being driven by bots and [ticket] brokers who are exploiting a scheme to leech off the work of artists.”
The CFFA has the backing of the state’s independent venue coalition NIVA CA, which has worked alongside the assemblyman to introduce the spot bill (a spot bill is an initial proposal that still requires legal guidance from state lawyers for final language). The nationwide National Independent Venue Association is also in support, as is musician advocacy group Music Artists Coalition – both of which have been vying to pass similar bills in states and jurisdictions across the country.
The only other state to have successfully passed a resale cap was Maine in 2025. The Maine bill also capped the resale value at 110% of the face value of the ticket. Several other states, including New York, Vermont, Washington and Tennessee, are seeking to implement similar legislation, as well as Washington, D.C.
By creating a resale ticket cap, “you remove the profit motive” for ticket brokers, says Music Artist Coalition executive director Rob Gubitz. With a markup of no more than 10%, artists performing in California could keep their ticket prices low without concerns that any value gap between their price and the price a broker could get on the secondary market would be minimal. If professional resellers can only make 10% on flipping tickets, that takes a lot of incentive out of the job since returns can no longer be hundreds of times the price of the face value ticket.
“This problem has gotten out of control and it’s getting much worse. We see concert tickets completely out of reach for actual fans and these brokers are getting more sophisticated in grabbing all the tickets and forcing fans to pay astronomical prices,” the assemblyman says. “We need arts and entertainment for our cities to thrive for our state’s economy to recover.”
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The California bill comes after the United Kingdom announced plans ban ticket resales over face value in November. The U.K. law seeks to limit the service fees that resale sites can charge and requires platforms like StubHub and Viagogo “to monitor and enforce compliance with the price cap.” The law also bans fans and resellers from buying more tickets than they are legally entitled to purchase during an initial ticket sale.
“We feel [the CFFA] that the price cap is something that is going to be good for the [live music] ecosystem overall,” says Golden Bear Strategies’ Alex Torres, who serves as the lobbyist for NIVA CA. “For fans, the real impact is affordability – being able to have a marketplace where, if you cannot attend, you can offload it and it’s more likely that someone will buy it with the intent of actually going to that show themselves. It fosters that ecosystem.”
Many live music venues, especially independent venues, have struggled with attrition since the pandemic, meaning “no show” rates have risen from the pre-COVID average of 5% to 20-30%. With venues making the majority of their revenue from food and beverage sales, the high attrition rates have cut greatly into their already declining profit margins. Advocates for this bill argue that more affordable tickets mean more actual fans can attend and possibly have more disposable income to purchase food, drinks or merchandise from the artist – adding to the live music ecosystem rather than that money going to third-party ticket brokers.
The CCFA would work in tandem with another bill introduced last year in the California legislature – AB 1349. The bill states that it “aims to stop that practice by outlawing speculative ticketing, whereby people advertise tickets for sale on a resale platform that they neither own nor are guaranteed to get. Music artists, independent concert venue operators, and Ticketmaster do not agree on much, but they are in agreement that the resale of entertainment tickets at greatly inflated prices is harming both artists and their fans.”
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AB 1349 would also ban the use of “a box office website that looks substantially similar to the venue or primary seller’s website in order to direct sales to the resale market,” meaning deceptive URLs that populate on search engines when fans search for artists’ tours would be outlawed in the state.
Assemblyman Haney’s bill “is very complimentary to this initial work that we’ve done [on AB 1349],” says NIVA CA president Joe Rinaldi, who also owns San Diego independent venue the Music Box. “We want customers to have confidence that they’re buying from the source and they’re not going to have an absolute nightmare on date night. That confidence starts with fixing the marketplace with these two pieces of legislation.”
NIVA executive director Stephen Parker says that the association has been working with the eight states (including California) that have introduced resale cap bills this year alone and he believes there will be more brought forth in other states likely this month and certainly this year. “It is an organic movement,” he tells Billboard, adding that the push for these limits is happening despite money-heavy lobbying efforts from secondary platforms. Other states “see that, if Maine can do this, we can do this. And if countries across Europe and Australia can do this, they can also do this.”
