CONTACT:
Chris Grimm
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media [at] fanfreedom [dot] org
HB 1893 Would Ensure Fair Access to Events and Protect Consumer Rights
Boston, MA – Sept. 20 – The Fan Freedom Project (FFP), a consumer rights and education organization with more than 40,000 members, today urged the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure to support Massachusetts HB 1893, a measure that would reform the issuance and sale of sports and entertainment tickets. Representative Mike Moran (D-Brighton) introduced the bill earlier this year to protect the rights of live event fans across the state.
“At the heart of this issue are Massachusetts sports and entertainment fans, whose hard-earned money pays for millions of tickets annually, and whose basic consumer rights and property rights are in your hands,” said Jon Potter, president of FFP. “Many in Massachusetts have signed our Fans Bill of Rights because they want more transparency in the ticketing market and ownership rights over the tickets they buy, including the right to share or sell them in a competitive, consumer-friendly marketplace.”
About 2,000 Massachusetts residents have joined FFP since its launch in February.
A recent poll commissioned by the Fan Freedom Project found that 90 percent of the 1,000 ticket users surveyed across the nation said they should have the right to resell or give away tickets they purchase to anyone they choose. In addition, 89 percent of respondents believe that once they have bought a ticket, it becomes their personal property and they have complete control over what they do with it.
The growing trend toward restrictive paperless tickets is a threat to consumers’ rights. These tickets work like airline tickets, requiring fans to show up at venues with their credit cards and IDs. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to give concert tickets away as gifts and for season ticket holders to sell tickets they are unable to use. If performing artists, teams, venues and ticket companies allow consumers to resell their tickets, they are often limited to select websites and pre-set prices. These restrictive features undermine consumer interests by reducing choice and flexibility in the ticket market.
Frank Fernandez of Dorchester, a frequent ticket buyer, said Ace Tickets, StubHub and several other brokers and marketplaces compete for his business. “I am here today to underscore the benefits of the resale market in Massachusetts,” Fernandez said in prepared testimony. “If restrictive ticketing practices are adopted by venues, teams and ticket issuers like Ticketmaster, they will push all their re-sales onto an exchange they own or prefer and I will lose this convenience – so will many thousands of Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins fans.”
HB 1893 affirms that fans own the tickets they buy by preventing artists, promoters, sports teams and venues from restricting what fans may do with tickets after purchase.
Consumers are also calling for greater transparency in the ticketing market. For concerts in particular, it has become all too common for artists and promoters to hold back tickets from the public for fan clubs, corporate sponsors, record labels and VIPs. In fact, some artists have been caught reselling tickets to their own shows at a hefty mark-up. Katy Perry, for example, reserves the right to hold back concert tickets from the public so that she can sell them on the secondary market at inflated prices. Similarly, news reports showed that Keith Urban “instructed the venues to pull out 50 prime seats to be auctioned off to the highest bidders through Ticketmaster” during his 2009 “Escape Together” tour.
HB 1893 seeks to bring the Massachusetts ticketing marketplace into the open by requiring ticket agencies and venues to disclose in advance of any concert, sporting event or other show, the total number of tickets issued and the total number of tickets available to the public.
“Purchasing event tickets is frequently confusing and frustrating for consumers,” said John Breyault, Vice President of Public Policy at the National Consumers League. “Fans have a right to know how many tickets are really available for a show. The ticketing transparency provisions in HB 1893 will give consumers a fighting chance in the ticket marketplace.”
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