‘Shockingly Weak:’ Music Advocacy Groups Say Funding Bill Will Help Ticket Scalpers

Music advocacy groups are worried after Congress‘ newly-unveiled legislation to keep the government funded through next March includes language they say allows ticket scalpers to mislead fans.

The frustration stems from a bill called the Ticket Act, which was introduced in Congress back in May. The act was one of many provisions included in the 1,547-page funding bill that Congress released on Tuesday.

The Ticket Act was written with the intent to protect consumers and add more transparency to the ticketing marketplace. The bill includes an all-in pricing mandate that requires ticketing services to list the full price of a concert ticket right away rather than hide the fees until the end of a purchase. (The Federal Trade Commission also issued an all-in ticketing rule earlier on Tuesday.) The bill also calls for the FTC to submit a report regarding enforcement history of the BOTS Act, a 2016 law meant to prevent scalpers from using bots to buy mass amounts of concert tickets. The act has been enforced just once since its passage.

But the Ticket Act’s critics argue that some of the language helps encourage speculative ticketing, a controversial practice in which scalpers list tickets that they don’t actually have yet for sale. Those tickets are often listed on resale sites like StubHub and Vivid Seats as “zone seats” where the specific seat number isn’t listed. If they don’t secure the ticket, the fan is refunded. At best, fans are buying tickets from scalpers at an upcharge who beat them to get seats in the first place. At worst, they can’t get into the venue, wasting time and money on any travel for the show.

The funding bill includes a ban on speculative ticketing itself, but it allows for secondary ticketing platforms to offer “services” to obtain tickets for a buyer as long as the platform “clearly and conspicuously discloses” that the service is not a ticket, and that using the service isn’t a guarantee that customers will actually get tickets. Vivid Seats currently advertises such a feature, calling it “seat saver,” and likening the service to grocery services like Instacart.

Advocates for the practice say the service is a premium for those looking for a more convenient alternative to waiting in long lines fighting to secure seats for a show. Skeptics argue that such a distinction is disingenuous given the scarcity issues around major live events. Some states such as Maryland passed laws recently to completely outlaw speculative tickets.

Kevin Erickson, the director of music advocacy nonprofit the Future of Music coalition, called the Ticket Act’s inclusion “a massive missed opportunity,” further stating that the bill’s language around the speculative ticketing provision was “shockingly weak.”

“The level of public frustration around these issues in the live music space has never been higher,” Erickson says. “And for Congress to fail to allow a single artist to testify on this legislation and then shove it through via this must-pass bill is the kind of thing that makes people cynical about politics. It’s the kind of thing that erodes public trust in these institutions.”

The Ticket Act comes amid increased scrutiny toward the live music industry. With fans angered by sky-high ticket prices, fees and deceptive ticketing practices states around the country have introduced bills and passed legislation trying to protect consumers. The DOJ filed a landmark lawsuit seeking a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, calling the music giant a monopoly. Live Nation has denied the allegations, arguing that the unregulated secondary ticket market is the cause of much of the fan frustration.

Prior to the funding bill’s reveal Tuesday evening, the Fix The Tix Coalition and the National Independent Venue Association issued a statement to Congress imploring lawmakers to modify the Ticket Act’s language to cut out provisions they said would allow brokers to deceptively list tickets.

“Our position is clear: Unless the fake ticket loophole is removed in its entirety from the Ticket Act, Congress must reject any inclusion of the Ticket Act in the Continuing Resolution,” the coalition said.

The Fix The Tix called the inclusion of the “services” option “a dangerous loophole.”

“So-called ‘concierge’ services or ‘Seat Saver’ ‘tickets’ masquerade as legitimate offerings but in reality sell nothing more than empty promises to obtain tickets later — often at inflated prices,” the coalition said. “Instead of guaranteeing an actual seat, they force fans to pay upfront with no assurance that genuine tickets will ever materialize.”

Following the funding bill’s reveal, NIVA‘s executive director Stephen Parker issued a lengthy statement saying the organization would try to “blunt, repeal, or strike down any federal provision that would directly or indirectly permit the sale of fake tickets.”

“These groups chose empowering predators and fighting progress behind the scenes over genuine consumer protections,” Parker said.

While NIVA had spent days trying to get lawmakers to remove the bill from the funding bill, the Ticket Act won over groups like the National Consumers League, which represents ticket resale platforms.

“The TICKET Act is a hard-fought compromise and, we believe, Congress’ best chance to deliver meaningful reforms that benefit fans, venues, and artists as early as next summer’s concert season,” John Breyault, the NCL’s vice president of public policy, telecommunications and fraud, said in a statement on Monday. “Congress should resist special interests, and stand up for consumers by including this package of positive reforms in the [funding bill].”