Featured Image: Jordon Conner on Unsplash
A new bill signed into law in the US state of Massachusetts has included a provision that allows ticket-sellers to prevent buyers from transferring or reselling tickets, or restricting sales to the platform where the ticket was originally purchased.
The Mass Leads Act focuses on climate, technology, life sciences and artificial intelligence (AI), but also includes the new provision around ticket resale.
The move has reportedly been criticised for increasing pricing for live music fans, and undercutting market competition.
MASSPIRG (Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group), a consumer watchdog, disagreed with the decision.
“I can’t resell it to anybody I want, I can’t give it to my friends or family if I can’t go and so it’s really harming fans,” said MASSPIRG’s Deirdre Cummings, as per CBS News.
Dan Wall, Live Nation’s vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, defended the new law and added: “It’s about whether the professional ticket brokers and the ticket resale sites that support them can use their bots and all their other tactics to grab thousand and thousands of tickets that were meant for real fans and instead put them on resale markets where they’re going to double the price.”
Should a sports fan or live music fan purchase a ticket for a game via Ticketmaster or SeatGeek and can no longer attend, this new law requires them to sell via the original platform rather than a secondary market – as long as the company is clear about the policy first.
Share this