Today Jon Potter, President of the Fan Freedom Project, delivered this testimony to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure in Support of HB 1893, ticket legislation to protect the rights of Massachusetts’ sports and music fans. Below is a copy of his testimony.

Chairman Kennedy, Chairman Speliotis, and Members of the Committee.

Thank you for permitting me to speak today on behalf of the Fan Freedom Project, a consumer advocacy organization promoting the interests of live event fans, with more than 2,000 supporters in Massachusetts.

Today you are considering several ticketing issues:

  • Whether event producers and ticketing agencies should provide basic consumer information, as you have previously required of car dealers and other retailers;
  • Whether consumers who purchase tickets own those tickets, including the right to re-sell if life’s challenges make it impossible to attend an event;
  • And whether consumers’ ticket ownership rights should be undermined by anti-consumer technology developed by Ticketmaster, which locks tickets to a purchaser’s credit card, and prohibits or impedes consumers’ ability to share tickets with friends or family or to sell them without permission from Ticketmaster or the event producer.

At the heart of your choices 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.

Many in Massachusetts have joined our Fans Bill of Rights, which include four basic principles.

Our first “fans’ right” is simple: Our tickets are our property. We buy them; we own them. In a recent poll commissioned by the Fan Freedom Project, 90 percent of 1,000 ticket users surveyed across the nation said they should have the right to resell or give away tickets that they purchase to anyone they choose – friends, family or other fans.

Which brings me to our second “fans’ right.” Once we purchase a ticket, we can share it or sell it in any way we choose and at any price we choose. This liberty is being threatened by the introduction of so-called “paperless tickets,” which Ticketmaster and its partners are characterizing as a consumer convenience. But these tickets are being required for some concerts and an increasing number of sports games. They are more accurately identified as “restrictive paperless tickets” because they are a significant inconvenience and an anti-consumer power-play. Left unchecked, restrictive paperless tickets will eliminate consumer choice and threaten a very competitive and innovative ticket resale market.

Ticketmaster paperless tickets are tied to the purchaser’s credit card and photo ID, and without the purchasing credit card and ID one cannot enter the event. If you buy your kids concert tickets you must stand on line with them to get into the show – even in January. If you are meeting friends for a game you must all enter together, so if one person is stuck at work or in traffic – everyone waits outside – even in January. And to make it easy for gift recipients to enter events, Ticketmaster’s website thoughtfully suggests you ask the recipient for his or her credit card number to purchase the tickets. In what other circumstance do you need a gift recipient’s credit card in order to give a gift?

Of course restrictive paperless tickets are difficult to resell. When Ticketmaster and its partners allow consumers to resell paperless tickets, we are required to sell on Ticketmaster-owned affiliates, and our pricing choices are restricted. It is often the case that consumers with paperless tickets are prohibited from offering tickets below face value. Imagine being told that you must re-sell your car at the original dealer’s lot and that the dealer will set the price. Or that the builder of your home must be your selling agent and can unilaterally determine your sales price.

If adopted by local sports teams and venues, paperless tickets would threaten today’s healthy and energetic competition between Ace, StubHub and other resellers. When competition is eliminated consumers always lose.

Our third “fans’ right” goes to honesty and integrity in the market: Fans have the right to know how many tickets are actually available to the public, and how many are pre-sold to VIPs and other special customers.

Just as car dealers and retailers are required by regulation to tell consumers how many products they are actually selling at advertised prices, so should event promoters tell us how many tickets they are actually making available to the public. It has become much too common for concert artists and promoters to pre-sell thousands of tickets to fan clubs and corporate sponsors, so when sellouts happen in five minutes we are all left wondering how so many tickets sold so quickly. Many promoters and artists also withhold tickets from being sold at the box office at face value, and instead secretly sell the best seats on resale markets at a steep markup. This summer, Katy Perry was the subject of media stories when it was learned that her tour contract allows her to sell her own concert tickets on resale markets — scalping as many tickets as she wants, at whatever price she wants, to thousands of her fans.

Our consumer survey found that two-thirds of ticket users said that artists, venues and event promoters should be required to disclose how many event tickets are made available to the general public for purchase. And seventy-two percent of fans disapprove of original ticket sellers secretly selling tickets through resale markets for higher than the face value.

Our fourth fans’ right is a point of agreement between the Fan Freedom Project and Ticketmaster, and with all sports teams and concert producers: We believe that fans have the right to fair access to tickets, without unfair competition from scalpers using software tricks to jump ahead of the line and purchase all the tickets. Ticket-buying software bots offend all fans, and we encourage you to amend H.B. 1893 to include a prohibition against the use of ticket-buying software.

Your support for H.B. 1893 will send a strong signal to consumers across the state –that all fans deserve fair access to tickets, and that when consumers buy tickets, we own them. On behalf live-event fans from Boston to Pittsfield, I urge you to embrace the benefits of consumer rights, property rights, and consumer-focused competition.

Thank you.