NY lawmaker's bill would regulate online concert sales in wake of Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster disaster

Ticketmaster came under fire following a chaotic online sale process for tickets to Swift's new concert shows.

News 12 Staff

Nov 19, 2022, 3:38 AM

Updated 771 days ago

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A state assembly member has introduced a bill that would regulate the sale of concert tickets in the fallout of the Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster fiasco.
Ticketmaster came under fire following a chaotic online sale process for tickets to Swift's new concert shows.
November started with Swift fans' wildest dreams coming true: The mega-star announced a new world tour in 2023 with two stops at MetLife Stadium.
Excitement for "The Eras Tour" was off the charts and on Monday over 2 million tickets were sold, the most ever for an artist in a single day, according to Ticketmaster. But then something music fans know all too well happened that Ticketmaster wasn't ready for: The high demand.
A post on Twitter by Ticketmaster started the bad blood between "Swifties" and the company as it announced that it was canceling the public online sales that was supposed to begin Friday.
Swift herself took to social media to voice her frustration with what happened. Frustrated fans were either left to shake it off or pay a small fortune for tickets on the secondary market.
State Assembly Member Kenny Burgos had seen enough. He's introducing a bill in the State Assembly to try and stop it.
"Most New Yorkers aren't aware, but Ticketmaster is essentially a monopoly," Burgos says. "What my bill would do would, essentially, require any sort of resale market, whether it's Ticketmaster, StubHub or any of the few who have those websites, to require all of their resellers to have an account with a verified name and photo similar to sites like eBay."
Burgos believes removing the veil from resellers would eliminate multiple accounts from being able to purchase hundreds of tickets solely to sell on the secondary market.
"But that's not what we're seeing. They have thousands of accounts. So this bill would really prohibit them from having an exorbitant amount of accounts and, in turn, an exorbitant amount of tickets," Burgos says.
Burgos introduced this bill earlier this year after having gone through the same mess that had many "Swifties" seeing red on Friday.
"Unfortunately, when you throw in these computer bots coupled with these resellers who hoard the market, it creates this artificial scarcity that really just price gouges people, so we're hopeful that this is the first step," Burgos adds.
This ticket fiasco even attracted federal attention. The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is looking into Live Nation, which merged with Ticketmaster over a decade ago, to see if they are, in fact, a monopoly.
Burgos' bill, meanwhile, is currently in committee.