r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 16h ago
Business Ticket resale giants sue Washington DC over new law that caps scalper markups at 10%
https://www.techspot.com/news/114236-ticket-resale-giants-sue-washington-dc-over-new.html3.3k
u/Neutral-President 16h ago
Cut the allowed markup to zero, and allow face-value resales only.
Problem solved.
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u/Brandoe 16h ago
That's what it is in Ontario. Ontario new resale laws
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u/Runsapuusa 15h ago edited 15h ago
The fine needs to be stricter based on the size of the company for it to have any deterrence. StubHub Canada was only fined $22k for breaking the cap law which is immaterial for them.
When I first read about that amount I'm thinking they can't be serious.
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u/craiggers14 14h ago
10x the value of the transaction involved per infraction. Should be the same for do-not-call list violations and the ads that intentionally play at higher volume.
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u/roseofjuly 15h ago
We need to be like the EU. They'll be like "so the fine is we're taking all of your money."
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u/flatulating_ninja 14h ago
The fine needs to be a multiple of their profits, not a fraction, or the crime just becomes the cost of doing business.
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u/Sweetwill62 12h ago
Or actual jail time for executives and shareholders. Companies won't break laws if shareholders are being carted off to jail for profiting from crimes.
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u/Tzchmo 12h ago
You can’t jail shareholders for owning stock. That’s crazy. You can’t jail people for not breaking a law. You can make a law that says no corporation can buy then sell tickets over face value. That solves the problem. “OH NO THINK OF ALL THE SHADY UNREGULATED SCALPERS”. Yeah they aren’t backed by millions and millions of dollars to buy up all the tickets at release. If I really wanna go to a shoe and my only option is the guy with a physical ticket at the corner that becomes my problem. As of now it’s everybody’s problem when shit sells out in 30 seconds and resell platforms triple the price. Fuck them all with a spiny dick.
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u/ShadowTacoTuesday 9h ago
The jail time for shoplifting costs the person more. Punishments need to fit crimes.
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u/randomman87 13h ago
It's intentional. "Look we implemented a law to stop this!"
A law with no teeth because that at least placates the lobbyists and the unaware public
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u/raferalston 16h ago
Wait so why do I see angine de poitrine tickets going for like 1000 dollars for their toronto show lol
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u/Ontoshocktrooper 15h ago
People break laws!?
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u/sokuyari99 15h ago
They forgot to make breaking the law against the law. Rookie mistake
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u/SmoogzZ 14h ago
That was just recently changed, and i’ve yet to see or hear of any meaningful enforcement.
Who’s actually coming after me if i resell my concert tickets for tonight for $50 more than i bought them?
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u/Tzchmo 12h ago
Individuals aren’t the issue, it’s the industry that buys all the tickets at release then raises the price. Nobody would turn to individual sellers raising the price if seat geek wasn’t 3x the price at release you couldn’t even buy because the bots swamped them.
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u/oompaloompa465 16h ago
as it should be, but those assholes have already greased palms enough that it will never happen
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u/JustToyingAround73 14h ago
"but that means less tickets will be sold so the artist is making a smaller profit!"
No, it means fans can obtain tickets without breaking their bank account so they can see an artist perform.
F these resellers. Their attitude, entitlement and greed is why we must make laws like this.
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u/Neutral-President 8h ago
Artists make zero on the secondary resale market. Allow refunds and return tickets to the primary sale pool.
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u/theretailreject 16h ago
Minnesota used to have this and then Republicans thought it was a good idea for markups
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u/Neutral-President 16h ago
It’s the “let the free market decide what the value should be” school of thought.
These are the same people who think dynamic pricing is a good thing.
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u/BrothelWaffles 15h ago
And I guarantee they're all complaining about their electricity, internet, and water bills going up every year too.
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u/SnooWoofers186 16h ago
Yeah, the best way. Since they are not happy that scalpers would be lawfully getting the 10% mark up. This will help them a lot.
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u/Pale-Code5934 15h ago
How about just allowing or demanding returns on the ticket and the originally seller has new inventory to sell. Why do we even need reselling at all?
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u/ScorpioTix 9h ago
Your average ticket is an impulse purchase and shows / tours are budgeted and staffed on existing and projected. Therefore no refunds.
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u/LandonKB 12h ago
This makes perfect sense we should not allow people to profiter on tickets. We don't need legitimized scalping!
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u/NMe84 14h ago
Require tickets to be bound to a name at the moment of sale. Don't allow the name to be changed, just allow refunds. Boom, no more scalpers.
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u/foggybottom 13h ago
We do that with travel already - can’t be hard to use the same process, it’s already laid out.
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u/graesen 16h ago
Could it be because those resale sites use bots themselves to scalp tickets to boost their profits further?
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u/mpember 16h ago
No bots required. They are operated by the same companies that sell the tickets in the first place, with an API offered to large-scale scalpers to streamline the process.
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u/Lykos1124 16h ago
Lol that's forked if true! They should be forced to sell tickets at 90% value for the next 30 years for how much they've stollen.
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u/mpember 15h ago
In Australia, Ticketmaster's own "Resale" platform launched with a 30% fee imposed on the seller, but allowed the seller to add this to the face value when selling. The end result was that they made more money from the resold ticket than the booking fee on the initial purchase.
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u/roseofjuly 15h ago
It's true, there have been a few articles about it. The seatgeek guy is out in the open about owning both a reseller and a scalping company.
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u/sandman8727 15h ago
I can attest that if you list tickets at a reasonable price StubHub will buy it from you then relist for what they think the market value is.
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u/gucknbuck 15h ago
I've come to the conclusion the USA exists just to create middle men. Insurance, tax companies, ticket resellers. The real American dream is to think of a way to instert yourself between a consumer and the product or service they want to further bleed us dry.
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u/debaser64 14h ago
You are so right. And don’t forget one of the worst - the car dealerships. They are so bad that there are companies who deal with buying a car for you, so there’s a middleman to help you avoid dealing with the middleman.
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u/AaronRodgersMustache 14h ago
They originally had a solid purpose. They were people with enough capital to buy a fleet of cars to sell to the people. The manufacturers couldn’t afford to do that all over the country back when. Then over time they did and tried to start undercutting the dealers who then lobbied saying what the hell.
But yeah in today’s world a lot of middlemen are entrenched and unnecessary and costing people a fortune. Ticketmaster and the like especially. They buy their own tickets to resell for higher for gods sakes.
And Ticketmaster is exempt from this law!!
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u/Exodus180 9h ago
buy a fleet of
carsX to sell to the people.yea thats just retail, they aren't special. What they actually lobby, because they are full of shit, is that the consumer is too stupid to buy a car without their help.
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u/hamandjam 8h ago
It's beyond "entrenched". In Texas, it is literally against the law for a car manufacturer to sell directly to consumers. The auto dealers association has had the Lege in their pocket for decades.
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u/Electrical_Humor680 14h ago
There is a guy on yt who does this.
He negotiates for a fee
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u/hamandjam 8h ago
I stumbled across him a few months back and binged a lot of his vids. He's got so .uch business he's got a big team of helpers and can afford to basically show how he does what he does and still have no shortage of customers because even after seeing how he works, peeie would still rather just lay him to not have to deal with the whole contrived "haggling" bullshit.
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u/HanSolo4Emporer 14h ago
Car lots. There is no logical reason we shouldn’t be able to get a car directly from an automaker.
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u/Splurch 13h ago
Car lots. There is no logical reason we shouldn’t be able to get a car directly from an automaker.
The origins of that were good though, car makers were a dime a dozen and often consumers couldn't find anyone capable of servicing them or even selling parts. Dealerships were the answer that worked well, even with all the deception and other issues they were a massive step up from what existed before. Yeah that's changed, but history had a good reason for implementing them.
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u/Secret_Association92 12h ago
Granted, insurance was originally created by farmers to ensure if one farm struggled, that they all chipped in to keep it afloat to the next season. But it has strayed so far from that now as publicly traded companies looking to maximize shareholder value.
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u/gucknbuck 12h ago
I'm pretty sure it originated in Shipping
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u/Secret_Association92 12h ago
Then my actuarial science textbook lied to me
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROFILE 11h ago
Agricultural risk management could loosely fall into insurance, so you're right. The first commercial insurance, as we know it, was shipping in 4000–3000 BCE in Babylonia and ancient China.
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u/HotwheelsSisyphus 8h ago
Could be one of those things that started separately in multiple places because the need is so great it's bound to be repeatedly invented.
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u/chitoatx 6h ago
It’s the Texas way! Car dealerships, alcohol distributors, soft drink distributors from the state that birthed Dell Computers that sold PC’s direct to consumers.
And Tesla: Tesla Underground: Texas Franchise Rules Make Model S Owners Skirt The Law https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1087815_tesla-underground-texas-franchise-rules-make-model-s-owners-skirt-the-law#:\~:text=%22But%20in%20the%20end%2C%20it%20was%20worth,state.%20Tesla%2C%20of%20course%2C%20has%20no%20dealers.
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u/screen_storytelling 11h ago
This concept is one of the foundations of a certain political ideology that criticizes separating the worker from the means of production...
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u/HotwheelsSisyphus 8h ago
Even the US government is like that. There's so much contract work that should be internalized. And those contractors charge a lot so the tax payers are footing the bill.
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u/existentialgolem 16h ago
""Ticketmaster backed this law; Ticketmaster pushed this law and Ticketmaster got itself exempted from this law. That's not a law that's going to serve DC well," Berry said.
So whats the truth then? because this is a good law as long as it applies to everyone equally.
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u/DinobotsGacha 15h ago
Vast majority of people in these comments didn't read it. I was onboard until it become clear the law was actually just ticketmaster cementing its monopoly.
They should not be exempt
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u/roseofjuly 15h ago
Just because someone says something doesn't mean it's true. The resellers know people hate Ticketmaster as much as if not more than they hate resellers, so they're just trying to shift the blame to a new boogie man and you fell for it. Ticketmaster is not exempt from this. The resellers are basically arguing that it's not fair for TM to make money off of primary ticket sales when they can't make money from secondary ones. It's a stupid, greedy argument.
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u/DinobotsGacha 15h ago
Ticketmaster is exempt as the primary box office and allowed to set the value of each ticket on the initial sale. It looks like nothing in the law prevents Ticketmaster from having dynamic pricing on event tickets. Secondary markets won't have access to the price ticketmaster originally sold the ticket for so how do they determine the max markup?
A venue/event should have to declare a face value and NO company should be able to exceed a 10% markup on the primary or secondary market
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u/BigMax 15h ago
I wonder how they exempted themselves?
I assume they found some loophole... One thing people don't know is that Tickemaster (it's parent company) owns or controls a TON of venues. So they have a massive extra level of almost monopoly power.
I assume the law was written to say "scalpers can't charge more than 10% more, unless the ticket seller is the one in charge of the venue, and then they are allowed." Or something like that.
The want to be able to scalp their own tickets and resell them again and again for profit, they just don't want anyone else to be able to buy 'their' tickets and resell them for a profit.
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u/deadexternet 2h ago
This law only applies to the secondary resale market, while Ticketmaster primarily operates as the original (primary) ticket seller.[1]
However, secondary marketplace advocates and trade groups like the Ticket Policy Forum argue that D.C.'s Restricting Egregious Scalping Against Live Entertainment (RESALE) Act creates a massive structural loophole: [1]
Primary vs. Secondary Sales: The D.C. law caps resale markups at 10% above the original face value and limits secondary platform fees. Because Ticketmaster sells tickets directly from the box office in primary transactions, its initial face-value and dynamic pricing mechanisms are not subject to the 10% resale cap. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Criticisms from Competitors: Secondary platforms—such as SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, Gametime, and TickPick—have filed a federal lawsuit to block the law, contending that leaving primary box-office pricing and Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing untouched gives Ticketmaster an unfair advantage while penalizing secondary sellers. [1, 2, 3]
Supporters' Stance: D.C. lawmakers and supporting independent venues (such as I.M.P.) defend the measure by stating it targets predatory scalping, bot-buying, and inflated markups on secondary ticket exchanges rather than primary box-office sales. [1, 2, 3]
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u/rushmc1 16h ago
The proper response here is to lower it to 5%.
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u/Klocknov 16h ago
I would be all like, you don't like 10%, welp I got a new offer for you of 0% going forward. If you don't like that I can make it a guaranteed loss if you want it.
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u/oompaloompa465 16h ago
nope, it should be 0 + taxes.
None will ever buy unless interested in going and if shit happens, you can still recoup most of the money spent.Scalping should NEVER be a source of income in any proper society
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u/Austin4RMTexas 15h ago
Fully agree. I'm done with allowing this to happen with the stupid excuse of "wHaT iF I cANT gO"? Then you should be happy with getting back most of what you spent, and that someone who is able to attend gets the opportunity to do so.
If you bought a ticket, 0% markup on resales. It will automatically fix the problem. If the problem of "can't go" affects anymore than 5% of attendees, then it wasn't really a serious commitment to begin with, and I'm fine with them not being able scalp. Any less than that, and its insane we have allowed this to go on so long for this BS reason
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u/Sufficient-Wafer1071 16h ago
This is the way. The beatings continue until moral improves
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u/Bicyclebillpdx_ 14h ago
I’m so confused. Tickets scalping used to be illegal how and when did it become legal? And why?
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u/humid_pajamas 12h ago
yeah also confused? shouldn't the scalpers be happy they are allowed to exist? now they're demanding rights and privileges? back to the galleys.
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u/aces613 12h ago
It’s been big business for a while… Stubhub, Seatgeek, even Ticketmaster has a reseller program now.
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u/Crazy_Law_5730 12h ago
Spoiler alert: the person reselling their tix on their site gets screwed and so does the buyer. The ticket giants are allowed to sell the same tickets twice at maximum profit for them, and maximum losses for everyone else.
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u/PipsqueakPilot 13h ago
Well you see when an Oligarch and Politician love money very much, they get together and do a special hug that legalizes certain kinds of crime. But only for those rich enough.
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u/bloodpukesalvation 11h ago
Ticketmaster/livenation have a ticket resale program.
It’s rare for events to offer refunds so the standard practice is to re-list your tickets on Ticketmaster. You can set your own price and Ticketmaster takes a cut from that resale transaction.
They prevent you from being able to refund your ticket so they can generate more revenue by forcing you to reSELL your ticket in which case they charge fees to buyer and seller AGAIN for the same ticket they charged fees on when the buyer purchased them originally.
With a limitation on resells I suspect they are worried they’ll lose income as fewer people will resell on their platform and the prices being capped means the fees they charge will be lower.
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u/ScorpioTix 9h ago
It was never was illegal unless you are referring to local ordinances or trespassing on private property
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u/nayrwolf 16h ago
Let’s go back to “stand in line” being the only way to get tickets and limit to only two per person.
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u/supermarino 16h ago
You mean, go to a place, and hang out for hours with people who like the same thing I do and have nothing to do while we wait other than chat? Careful there, we might start making friends again.
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u/figuren9ne 16h ago
I do this with Pokemon. I go to Target and stand in line to buy pack to open with my son, not to scalp, and always end up making new friends in the line that are also their to buy packs to open.
Reddit always has questions about how to make friends and the easiest answer is to have a hobby and do that hobby in public.
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u/mrlolloran 16h ago
I get pushback telling people they should cancel their Amazon accounts and you think people are going to stand in lines for hours every time they want tickets to something?
No version of lol covers this
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u/cbelt3 16h ago
I miss those days. Saw some awesome bands because I was willing to stand / sit/ sleep in line for a couple of days. Made seeing the band even sweeter. (Queen, Stones, Moody Blues…)
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u/Stock_Username_Here 15h ago
I still go to the box office when I can to buy tickets. No service fees and if you go when tix go on sale you can beat the bots and online crowd.
Sometimes you still get paper tickets!
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u/Mango027 16h ago
That works until the band you want to see is going to be in a city 2 hours away or you want to see an away game of your local sports team
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u/CokBlockinWinger 15h ago
You bought the tickets at a vendor site, not necessarily at the box office. I used to stand in line at a department store for tickets to large festivals that were being held two hours away.
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u/superredditor6789 15h ago
How about wanting to see the Philadelphia Eagles in Philadelphia?
The only single game tickets the Eagles sell are super expensive club seats and unused tickets allocated to the away team.
Every other seat is held by a season ticket holder and there’s at least an 18-year wait for season tickets.
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u/Mango027 15h ago
There's a reason I've never been able to see my favorite team as a non- local fan... and you've described it perfectly.
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u/AffectionateBox8178 13h ago
That is how it was back in the day. People would drive 3-4 hours for the line to get tickets.
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u/Specialist-Aspect434 15h ago
Gosh, if only there was a way to get those tickets before resale sites. Nobody ever saw a concert before stubhub
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u/Baybutt99 16h ago
Spoken like a person who hasn’t seen the Pokemon trading card game drops, people in sweatpants and flip flops working in groups to box out real fans. It truly is ruined
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u/Ruby5000 15h ago
Yep, I totally agree. That’s how I got my 8th row tix to Tom Petty, back in 96! It was $50 and I was a massive fan of Mary Jane’s Last Dane/ Wildflowers. Stood in like for over an hour with a bunch of other fans (most older than me). What a memory!
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u/smoopy62 15h ago
It's kind of like Legalized sports gambling. The mafia ran it, it was considered vice, and you would go to jail. Scalping used to be illegal. But money buys legislation. I'm waiting for legal organ purchasing. Just another example of capitalism without any guardrails
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u/blackmobius 7h ago
Why is the markup capped at 10%?
Make it zero. Scalping and reselling has ruined a ton of live events, kids collectables, hobbies… the works. Bots swipe everything up then price out everyone. People want to enjoy things without having to take out loans
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u/InformedTriangle 14h ago
my take from reading this; '. Tickets to most sporting events and movie tickets are exempt"
Wtf do sporting events and movies get a free pass to scalping?
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u/pkinetics 14h ago
Because sports team owners write very large checks to campaign and retirement funds for politicians
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u/ScubaSteve12345 16h ago
For those that didn’t read the article, Ticketmaster supports this law because it doesn’t really affect their business model. Smaller resale sites are the ones suing because it’s only for the DC area.
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u/dropthemagic 15h ago
Needs to be even more aggressive. It's fucking bullshit I haven't been able to go to a concert in so many years. I just can't justify those costs anymore.
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u/Another_Slut_Dragon 14h ago
Cap ticket sales at face value. If resale companies want to make a profit they can buy unwanted tickets at less than face value.
This destroys the resale market.
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u/trustifarian 12h ago
Cap ticket resales at 90% of face value. Fuck this shit. Ticket resales should be “something came up, I can’t go” not a business model.
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u/peanut6547 16h ago
Also make it so there is zero resale fee to the original purchaser since they already paid the first ticket fee.
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u/engineeringsquirrel 5h ago
Are they seriously making the argument to make scalping at huge markups legal?
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u/GunnieGraves 14h ago
As someone who worked at StubHub and had to listen to how these asshole spoke to customer service people who were merely informing them that they were being charged a fee for failing to provide working tickets, I have no sympathy for these assholes. These guys would fuck customers over left right and Center and then when they got charged penalties for it, they call and cry about it. I literally heard a grown man crying once it’s because he was gonna get hit with thousands of dollars. Well, don’t say you have tickets that you don’t actually have.
Fuck scalpers and fuck that industry.
Still better than when I worked for insurance companies.
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u/Trajen_Geta 16h ago
More states should follow with a sell at a loss resale, have to resell a ticket, take a 5% hit.
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u/StrengthFew9197 7h ago
A restaurant’s profit margins are often less than this. They are beneficial to our communities, and usually working their butts off for it. What benefit do scalpers bring to society? None. Nothing. They’re literally greedy soul suckers who don’t even deserve 10%
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u/guyxbwc 15h ago
Name and shame the companies.
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u/JasonShoes 14h ago
SeatGeek, Ticketmaster, Stubhub so basically the only way you can get a ticket to anything
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u/Reddit_P2E_Seeker 13h ago
Sounds like Ticketmaster got exempt
Berry added that the law exempts primary ticket sales, like Ticketmaster and venue box office ticketing, allowing them to raise ticket prices and undermine the stated purpose of the law, while making it harder for TPF members to compete "in a market dominated by an illegal monopoly."
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u/CooCooClocksClan 13h ago
You’re misreading. If Ticketmaster host resale then the rule applies because the rule is about resale not primary or first sale.
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u/_Lost_The_Game 13h ago
Music wise, thats Only for large corporate events.
Go to smaller events, support smaller venues and artists. And they often hate/dont use those sites either.
iirc its just the big venues and corporations that have exclusivity deals with those companies
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u/Organic-Story-172 14h ago
It's always the usual suspects—StubHub and Vivid Seats leading the charge to protect their racket
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u/7StarSailor 9h ago
throw a brick at whomever allowed ticket reseller to become giants in the first place
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u/jt19912009 16h ago
They should change the law and limit it to 1% or maybe even 0% because it should be illegal
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u/mvb827 13h ago
If people keep buying it they’ll keep selling it. I think it would be much more effective to require by law that all resold products of any kind have to be clearly labeled as such so people can informedly decide for themselves whether or not they want to buy previously purchased and exorbitantly marked up stuff.
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u/Go_Gators_4Ever 12h ago
The trouble is that they have to be certain to classify "fees" as part of the markup.
These resellers claim they are only charging face-value, but they charge fees that can double the actual cost.
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u/Mavranos 11h ago
Fuck everything about ticket sales these days. I recently needed to sell a ticket to a show because my son had a conflict. I just want to recoup my money and listed the ticket at a price that would just barely cover what I paid. After listing it I searched for for available tickets and found mine - Ticketmaster DOUBLED the listed cost from what I input. What a garbage company.
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u/ScorpioTix 9h ago
None of these laws will stop Redditors from sending millions to third world for non-existent tickets for every sold out event.
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u/FartsbinRonshireIII 16h ago
Sue? Don’t they know all they have to do is contribute to his campaign?
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u/Anonymous_Whisp 16h ago
Why would they care if they already sold their ticket at full value? Throw them in jail......
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u/firemage22 10h ago
The City OWNS Nationals park they should very much have a say
that said i want Lina Khan at the Justice Dept come 2029
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u/T-rexKing 8h ago
That should be for all businesses. Why should they be allowed to overprice the value of labour and ressources?
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u/aquestionofbalance 12h ago
Of course they are, it would be a crime if regular people could start going to concerts without thousands of dollars suspended on tickets to go to concerts again.
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u/ccwithers 4h ago
How do I get a job shoehorning words into catchy backronyms like RESALE? Seems like a fun gig!
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u/vocaliser 3h ago
Resellers and scalpers can pound sand. They've taken too much away from too many.
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u/flaming_bob 16h ago
The scammers are suing. I miss the days when they would just find a new scam.