Ticket transferability is one of the most important consumer protections for fans of live events. It is one of the pillars of the Ticket Buyer Bill of Rights, for which Sports Fans Coalition advocates. Fans often have to buy a ticket to an event months in advance, and sometimes life has other plans. This is especially true of fans who invest in season tickets and are holding many tickets for a sports season. If a fan can’t attend the event, they should be able to resell their ticket to make up any losses they may face. However, there’s another important element to fan resale – consumer savings.

Last night, in dealing a victory in the name of consumer protection, Colorado Governor Jared Polis vetoed SB23-060. Though it included some good provisions, this legislation would have given permission to live event ticketing giants Ticketmaster and AXS to deceive consumers when tickets go on sale by creating fake scarcity, and turning a blind eye to illegal software bots that scoop up tickets before humans can instead of reporting their usage to law enforcement. It also contained a loophole that could have handed Ticketmaster, AXS and event venues the ability to cancel, revoke, or otherwise invalidate tickets they already sold for various reasons - a unique power in the market that other ticketing companies argue could harm consumers by making them fearful to buy tickets from another ticketing company even if they find better tickets at a lower price.  

Sports Fans Coalition, a member of the Ticket Buyer Bill of Rights Coalition, today released polling conducted by Rick Ridder of RBI Strategies & Research finding that voters overwhelmingly oppose many provisions included in Senate Bill 23-060 and support a key transparency provision that was removed from the final bill at the request of large dominant ticket sellers Ticketmaster and AXS. The poll found that 81% of Colorado voters oppose provisions in the bill which could allow companies like Ticketmaster and AXS to prevent fans from freely giving away or selling their purchased tickets. Additionally, nearly 9 in 10 voters (88%) of those polled support a requirement of these companies to disclose their use of the deceptive practice of holding back tickets from the initial sale to manufacture scarcity to mislead consumers into buying tickets at arbitrarily higher prices.

Some supporters of the Ticket Buyer Bill of Rights have joined SFC in calling for Colorado Governor Jared Polis to veto Senate Bill SB 23-060, "Consumer Protection in Event Ticketing Sales.” Despite its name, Sports Fans Coalition, the National Consumers League, the Consumer Federation of America, Public Knowledge, Fan Freedom, and Protect Ticket Rights have demonstrated that the bill will actually harm consumers and proposed two amendments that would make the bill consumer-friendly. Once the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee added ticket holdback disclosures and mandatory bots reporting to the bill through amendment L033, these same groups then endorsed the bill. 

This week, Sports Fans Coalition fought the Devil in Georgia and testified about how ticket transferability is important for fans - especially season ticket holders. Georgia's lawmakers want to hear from you, now!

This week, Sports Fans Coalition traveled to Denver, CO to oppose SB 060.

This week Sports Fans Coalition filed comments at the FTC for their Unfair or Deceptive Fees Trade Regulation Rulemaking process. The FTC requested information on how consumers are charged excessive fees by companies, especially in the live event ticketing industry. It’s no secret Ticketmaster is among the worst culprits when it comes to charging fans junk fees, and largely because of its monopoly. “We discuss conduct employed by Ticketmaster/Live Nation that falls explicitly within the several categories identified by the agency in the ANPR,” reads the comments before listing a litany of consumer harms imposed by Ticketmaster.”

… Ready for it? Sports fans know All Too Well the miserable ticketing process that Ticketmaster puts us through whenever we want to buy tickets to a game. They jack up prices with fees, restrict our right to transfer our tickets and make the general buying process frustrating. Sports Fans Coalition has spent the last several years educating lawmakers and the public about this, and last week our efforts reached a boiling point. Call It What You Want; bad luck, Karma, or unchecked monopoly power run amok, Ticketmaster is no longer Untouchable.

Sports Fans Coalition has long advocated for better live event ticketing legislation that would improve transparency, promote competition, and reduce fraud. The issues that plague sports fans when they try to purchase a baseball ticket or resell that ticket because they can no longer make the game are not new to sports fans. Fortunately, in the past couple of years, many states have heard SFC's plight and have made significant improvements to their marketplaces.

State legislators across the country are fighting to protect sports fans from unfair ticketing practices. The latest battle? The transferability of tickets.