Before it sold out, Hozier fans paid $40 via Ticketmaster to sit on the lawn for the singer’s Merriweather Post Pavilion concert in May. Now, latecomers who buy tickets on StubHub will pay nearly five times more for the same vantage point.
In some extreme cases, tickets are being digitally hawked on resale sites for 10 or 20 times their face value — before the Columbia music venue even puts them on sale, said Audrey Fix Schaefer, the director of communications for I.M.P., which operates Merriweather Post Pavilion.
“Pricing, it’s so far out of control,” Schaefer said. When it comes to the tickets available to customers, “even if they’re paying two times as much, or five times as much, they don’t have to, when they could buy them from us.”
Not to mention the disappointment directed at Merriweather when a resale ticket doesn’t work, a common fate, Schaefer said.
Now, Maryland’s ticketing landscape is poised for an overhaul. Proposed legislation banning the sale of “speculative tickets” — or those not yet in the possession of the reseller — and capping the prices of resale concert, live theater, sporting event and other tickets faces a receptive audience in the Maryland General Assembly, where some lawmakers are seeking to boost consumer protections.
The total price of a resale ticket would be capped at the initial ticket price, including all taxes and fees, except in the case of season tickets or those purchased for a series of events. In those instances, individual tickets could not be resold for more than the price of comparable tickets.
Maximum fees charged by resale websites would be limited to 10% of the total price of the initial ticket.
Cross-filed House Bill 701 and Senate Bill 539 would also require that all ticket sellers, resellers and online ticket marketplaces clearly show the ticket’s total cost, including all fees and taxes, at each step of a transaction. The bills also require resellers to share ticket purchasers’ contact information with the original ticket issuer, so that any changes to the event can be communicated.
The office of Sen. Dawn Gile, a Democrat who represents part of Anne Arundel County and is the primary sponsor of SB 539, said the bill would apply as long as a ticket transaction has some connection to Maryland, according to guidance from the state Attorney General’s Office. The law would apply if the ticketed event is in Maryland, or if the event is elsewhere and the seller has “reason to know” that the consumer is in Maryland.
The bill is expected to be taken up by the Senate Finance Committee Thursday.
The proposed legislation has already elicited support from some major players — from Merriweather Post Pavilion and the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra to SAG-AFTRA, the union representing the entertainment industry — and also pushback from major resale platforms, plus certain consumer advocacy groups.
“There’s a lot of not only manipulation of the market, but also deception,” Gile said. “It was important for us, from our perspective, to try to create a fair market that doesn’t currently exist.”
Automatic software bots that buy tickets in bulk to resell for a profit are a big problem, Gile added. In 2016, new federal legislation made it illegal to use bots to get around ticketing restrictions or to resell tickets, though the law hasn’t been widely enforced.
In a Feb. 20 House Economic Matters Committee hearing chaired by Del. C.T. Wilson, a Charles County Democrat who is sponsoring the House bill, Steven Sakamoto-Wengel, deputy chief of the Attorney General Office’s Division of Consumer Protection, testified that a violation of HB701 would be a violation of Maryland’s Consumer Protection Act.
“If they can’t sell above face value, there’s no need to use all the bots to scoop up all the tickets,” said Schaefer. “Selling tickets to shows that you have never had an intention to go to should not be a profession in Maryland.”
If passed, the legislation could result in national ticket resale businesses like StubHub, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek being pushed out of Maryland, Schaefer said, allowing tickets priced the way artists intend to become more readily available to fans.
Representatives of Vivid Seats, SeatGeek and StubHub coalesced in support of all-in pricing — allowing fans to see the cost of a ticket with fees from the start — during the House hearing, but not of other aspects of the bills.
“The Maryland legislation is the wrong solution to the consistent problem of consumers being frustrated when trying to buy a ticket,” Laura Dooley, head of global government relations at ticket reseller StubHub, told The Baltimore Sun in a statement. “StubHub joins industry and consumer groups in opposing harmful provisions like this that limit consumer choice or control over the tickets they’ve purchased.”
A SeatGeek spokesperson said the company is working with legislators to ensure the bills don’t harm consumers.
“We believe fans should not experience financial hardship or loss if they wind up not being able to attend a live event,” the spokesperson for SeatGeek, which provides primary and resale tickets for Ravens games, said in a statement to The Sun.
A Vivid Seats spokesperson said the proposed price cap on resale tickets could “hurt everyday fans.”
Capping the maximum price of resale tickets would force sports fans willing to pay more to turn to a “gray market,” rather than a known resale site, said Brian Hess, the executive director of D.C.-based Sports Fans Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy organization.
The secondary market sometimes creates savings for sports fans, said Sports Fans Coalition founder and Bethesda resident David Goodfriend, pointing to football season ticket holders who sell tickets to some games to afford their investment.
The coalition, which receives funding from various sources including StubHub, would like to see legislators strike the proposed guidelines surrounding the resale of individual tickets originally purchased as part of a package for a series of events, Hess said.
“You’d probably actually see a lot of fans drop their season tickets” otherwise, he said.
Sports Fans Coalition backs The Ticket Buyer Bill of Rights, a national movement based on principles such as transparent pricing, eliminating competition from bots and allowing ticket holders to set the resale price.
Goodfriend is in support of Senate Bill 1113, a different take on ticket regulation, backed by Sens. Stephen S. Hershey Jr. and Katherine Klausmeier.
“I don’t want to see Maryland become the place where Ticketmaster wins,” he said.
Ticketmaster did not respond to a request for comment.
Hess also raised concern over the proposed requirement that resellers provide the original ticket issuers with their purchaser’s contact information. While the clause has support from Merriweather, other Maryland entertainment venues said it would present a hardship.
Jonathan Schwartz, executive director of Lyric Baltimore, which he said is in favor of the bill with amendments, called the clause “impractical” and “burdensome” in testimony before the House of Delegates.
“We support the intent of the bill, which is to go after actors who are taking advantage of our patrons,” he told The Sun. But with only two full-time ticket office workers, Lyric Baltimore isn’t equipped to handle the data it would receive related to ticket resales.
“We just don’t have the resources,” Schwartz said. “How do we know who it’s coming from? How do we know it’s trustworthy?”
Changes to the bills, which have not yet received committee votes, are possible. Gile said they could look like raising the cap on ticket resale fees, or allowing ticket sellers more discretion about how their tickets are sold on the secondary market.
“I don’t want it fully watered down,” she said. “We’re going to push hard. I’m going to push hard on getting this bill as strong as I can.”