Resale Industry Confronts Coordinated Statehouse Campaign to Restrict Ticket Competition

Advocates at the World Ticket Conference said most resale price-control proposals failed to advance in 2026, preserving consumer choice and marketplace competition as the industry prepares a more affirmative legislative agenda.

NEW ORLEANS — Ticket resale advocates see both a growing political challenge and an opportunity to make a stronger public case for competition as the live entertainment industry enters another consequential legislative cycle.

More than 100 ticket-related bills have been introduced during 2026, while dominant primary ticketing interests, artist representatives and independent-venue advocates have organized behind overlapping restrictions on resale marketplaces.

But panelists at the World Ticket Conference rejected the idea that those efforts have left the resale industry politically isolated or in retreat.

Approximately 13 resale price-control proposals failed to advance during the current legislative cycle, Ticket Policy Forum Executive Director Brian Berry told the audience. Measures enacted in Vermont and approved in Washington, D.C., received considerably more attention, but represented only a portion of the year’s legislative record.

For consumers, panelists argued, the proposals that failed or were narrowed preserved more than the commercial interests of resale businesses. They maintained the ability of ticket holders to transfer or resell tickets at their market value, allowed buyers to compare inventory across competing platforms and avoided pushing transactions toward social media or other channels that may offer fewer guarantees.

The resale sector has also developed a broader and better-funded advocacy network than it possessed during earlier fights over paperless tickets and transfer restrictions, with marketplaces, trade organizations and locally based ticket businesses participating more directly in state policy debates.

Panelists said the next step is to build on those developments by advancing affirmative legislation protecting competition and ticket ownership, communicating more clearly how open marketplaces benefit consumers and improving practices that have weakened public trust.

The panel took place at a meaningful crossroads for the live event ticketing business. A bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general is asking a federal court to impose structural remedies on Live Nation and Ticketmaster after a jury found the companies liable for antitrust violations. At the same time, an increasingly coordinated statehouse campaign is advancing ticketing policies that panelists warned could reinforce the control already exercised by dominant primary-market interests.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster, independent venues, artists, music managers and advocacy organizations supporting those policies are doing so for varied reasons. On some major issues, they notably disagree.

Nevertheless, they are promoting overlapping regulatory concepts that could produce a common competitive result: greater authority for original ticket sellers, fewer viable independent distribution channels and additional restrictions on what ticket holders may do with tickets they own.

The panel brought together Berry; Gametime Head of Public Policy Jon Potter; SeatGeek Vice President of Government Relations Joe Freeman; Coalition for Ticket Fairness Executive Director Dana McLean; and moderator Gary Adler, executive director and counsel for the National Association of Ticketing Professionals. The World Ticket Conference was held July 27-29 in New Orleans.

Consumer Protection and Competition Need Not Conflict

The resale advocates did not oppose every legislative response to problems in ticketing.

All-in pricing, stronger enforcement against illegal bots, meaningful refund requirements, prohibitions against deceptive websites and clear disclosures about what a consumer is purchasing have broad support among resale marketplaces and professional ticket businesses.

“We agree that the fan should come first,” McLean said. “We agree that transparency to the consumer when they’re shopping is very important. Where we disagree is when policies, either overtly or cleverly, tilt the scales of competition.”

The most consequential disagreements concern resale price controls, resale-only fee caps and provisions allowing original sellers to determine which marketplaces, sellers or ticket transfers receive favorable treatment.

Panelists argued that those proposals are not competitively neutral because they impose limits on independent resale businesses while leaving original sellers with substantially greater control over pricing, inventory and distribution.

Primary sellers can employ dynamic pricing, premium-ticket programs, inventory holdbacks and variable fees. A resale price cap does not prevent the original seller from increasing a ticket’s initial price in response to demand, nor does it require the primary seller to release all available inventory at once.

Price caps also do not create additional tickets for an event with more interested buyers than available seats.

The resale industry’s consumer argument is that competition gives buyers more ways to respond to those conditions. Shoppers can compare prices and seating options among multiple platforms rather than relying on one official seller. Ticket holders whose plans change can recover value from tickets they can no longer use. Buyers may also find tickets below their original price when an event does not sell out or demand falls below expectations.

Professional resellers assume financial risk when they acquire inventory. For the substantial number of events that do not sell out, those sellers have an incentive to reduce prices as showtime approaches rather than receive nothing for an unused ticket.

The result is a marketplace that can produce high prices for genuinely scarce events but also discounts when supply exceeds demand.

Panelists said preserving that competition is compatible with stronger standards for disclosures, fulfillment and seller conduct. Their position was not that every existing resale practice should be protected. It was that targeted consumer protections can address fraud and deception without removing legitimate marketplaces or transferring additional control to an already dominant primary seller.

Public Model Legislation Drives State Campaign

McLean said resale advocates have repeatedly encountered similar language in different states, including provisions appearing to have been drawn from common legislative templates.

The coordination is largely visible in public.

The Fix the Tix coalition publishes model legislation calling for a ban on resale above the original ticket price, a cap on resale fees, prohibitions against speculative listings, seller-identification requirements and additional obligations for resale marketplaces. The campaign is nominally led by the National Independent Venue Association and Eventbrite and includes more than 30 organizations representing venues, artists, managers, promoters, performing arts organizations, record companies and ticketing businesses.

Fix the Tix has encouraged lawmakers to introduce related policies across the country and has publicly described efforts to secure resale price caps and speculative-ticket prohibitions in dozens of states.

The coalition’s artist-management network includes the Music Artists Coalition, which identifies itself as a Fix the Tix member and supporter of the campaign’s model legislation.

Irving Azoff, the former Ticketmaster chief and Live Nation executive chairman who remains one of the music business’s most influential artist managers, founded MAC and continues to serve on its board. Those roles place Azoff within a particularly powerful artist-management network supporting the coalition’s ticketing agenda, although NIVA and Eventbrite formally spearhead the broader campaign.

Live Nation has separately supported resale price caps and speculative-ticket restrictions, including the Massachusetts proposal promoted by Gov. Maura Healey and musician Noah Kahan. The company’s alignment with Fix the Tix on those policies does not mean the organizations share the same position on every ticketing or antitrust issue.

NIVA, for example, has strongly criticized the Justice Department’s proposed Live Nation settlement and continues to describe the company’s market power as a threat to independent venues.

On resale regulation, however, the dominant concert promoter and ticketing company is frequently advocating for the same general policy direction as independent-venue and artist groups.

That parallel advocacy has produced an effective legislative message: Professional resellers extract money from fans, artists and local communities without contributing to the production of an event, while price controls will allow more consumers to attend shows at affordable prices.

Potter described the strongest version of that argument from the venue perspective. When a professional seller buys a $40 ticket and resells it for $300, supporters say, the fan may be able to afford only one event instead of several and may have less money to spend at restaurants, bars or other businesses surrounding the venue.

It is a straightforward message during a broader affordability crisis.

The panel’s response was that demand does not disappear when lawmakers establish a price ceiling. When regulated marketplaces cannot accommodate the price that buyers are willing to pay, transactions may migrate toward private groups, social media, street sales or other channels with fewer consumer protections.

Rather than reducing the market value of a scarce ticket, a cap can determine where the transaction occurs and who assumes the risk.

State Proposals Could Undercut Consumers’ Antitrust Victory

The statehouse campaign is unfolding during an unresolved antitrust proceeding that could transform the structure of the live entertainment business.

A federal jury found Live Nation and Ticketmaster liable in April for violating federal and state antitrust laws. The jury found that Ticketmaster unlawfully maintained monopoly power in primary ticketing services for major concert venues and that Live Nation engaged in additional anticompetitive conduct involving amphitheaters and concert promotion.

New York and a bipartisan coalition of 33 other state attorneys general continued the trial after rejecting the Justice Department’s proposed settlement with the companies. The states will now seek financial and structural remedies during a separate phase of the litigation.

From a consumer perspective, the verdict represented a finding that reduced competition in ticketing led to higher costs and fewer choices.

The Justice Department’s settlement is itself based partly on the premise that venues and consumers need additional ticket-distribution competition. Among other provisions, the proposed judgment would require Ticketmaster to develop technology allowing venues using its back-end system to distribute primary tickets through alternative marketplaces selected by the venue.

Panelists argued that some state ticketing proposals would move in the opposite direction by damaging the economics of the independent marketplaces expected to offer that competition.

“It was just a few months ago that finally a jury reached the conclusion that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is operating an illegal monopoly,” Berry said. “Yet legislatively, in state capitals, there’s a push to pass laws to enshrine their permanency.”

The District of Columbia Council gave final approval this month to the RESALE Act, which caps covered live-entertainment ticket resales at 10% above the original price and limits resale fees to an additional 10%. The restrictions do not apply to sporting events or movies.

The measure also includes provisions with broader industry support, including all-in pricing, a speculative-ticket prohibition and registration and bonding requirements for higher-volume resellers. The Council removed earlier language that could have allowed regulation of some primary-market fees.

Vermont’s Act 109 took effect July 1. It caps resale prices at 110% of the original ticket price for events at venues with capacities of 3,000 or fewer while also prohibiting speculative listings and deceptive marketing.

The Massachusetts Senate has placed a 110% resale price cap, speculative-ticket prohibition and deceptive-marketing restrictions into its version of a broader economic-development package. The House version did not include the same ticket provisions, leaving the matter subject to negotiations between the chambers. The 10% resale fee cap contained in the original proposal was removed from the Senate’s final version.

North Carolina enacted another form of asymmetric regulation through its budget legislation. Beginning Oct. 1, a secondary marketplace that is not the original ticket issuer must provide shoppers with an active link to the issuer’s website.

The law also includes consumer protections supported across much of the industry, including all-in pricing, bot restrictions and a speculative-ticket prohibition. Its referral requirement nevertheless means an independent marketplace must direct a consumer toward the original seller after attracting that shopper and presenting available inventory.

“How do you like it in North Carolina that on secondary-market resale transactions, you have to put a link to the box office if it’s Ticketmaster?” McLean said. “Basically, Ticketmaster gets free advertising on everybody else’s dime.”

Panelists said laws should be judged not by whether they benefit one segment of the ticketing industry, but by whether they give consumers more meaningful options.

A rule that addresses fraud, hidden fees or deceptive marketing across the entire market can improve the buying experience. A rule that selectively burdens independent marketplaces while steering shoppers toward the original seller may instead reduce the competition that consumers need.

Local Businesses Can Tell a Stronger Consumer Story

One of the panel’s more optimistic themes was the resale industry’s growing ability to participate in state and local advocacy.

Potter said the sector is substantially better organized than it was during ticket-transferability battles 15 years ago, when StubHub often stood largely alone against Ticketmaster, venue owners and professional sports organizations.

More marketplaces and ticket businesses are now funding policy work, hiring experienced advocates and appearing personally before legislators.

Local participation is particularly important because independent venues possess a natural political advantage. They employ residents, pay local taxes, participate in community-development efforts and often maintain long-standing relationships with municipal and state officials.

“The small venues are in the game,” Potter said. “They have relationships—deep, 10-, 15-, 20-year relationships.”

Professional ticket businesses can tell a similar local story.

Many employ customer-service and operations teams, maintain offices, pay state and local taxes and work directly with buyers when a transaction encounters a problem. They also help distribute inventory for events that have not sold through their original channels.

Those businesses are rarely visible to consumers or lawmakers, however.

A buyer using a major marketplace may not know which independent seller is fulfilling an order, how long that business has operated or how many successful transactions it has completed. The seller may be known publicly only when something goes wrong.

Panelists encouraged local ticket businesses to meet directly with lawmakers and explain how their work affects consumers. They also called for more participation from satisfied marketplace customers.

Millions of buyers use resale platforms successfully, but those consumers generally do not contact lawmakers after receiving their tickets and entering an event without difficulty.

The consumer left outside an arena after paying for travel and lodging has a far stronger reason to make that call.

“We don’t have a legislative problem. We have a reputation problem,” Potter said.

The comment was not presented as a declaration that the industry is losing. It was a warning that successful transactions and consumer benefits do not automatically translate into public support.

The industry must identify and communicate those outcomes rather than allowing its public identity to be defined exclusively by failed sales and sensational asking prices.

Better Practices Can Strengthen the Case for Competition

Panelists said the resale industry also has several opportunities to improve its political position without waiting for lawmakers to impose new restrictions.

Clearer delivery disclosures, stronger seller accountability, meaningful distinctions between secured and speculative inventory and the removal of businesses responsible for repeated fulfillment failures could improve the customer experience while depriving price-cap advocates of their most effective examples.

Broken transactions remain particularly damaging.

“The guy who got the broken-sale ticket on a resale marketplace, who’s standing outside an arena, who’s calling his legislator—that horror story overwhelms everything,” Potter said. “And that’s a real story.”

Recent World Cup fulfillment failures intensified those concerns. Buyers reported canceled or undelivered resale orders after committing money to travel and lodging, while marketplaces and sellers struggled with FIFA’s restrictive and frequently changing ticket-transfer process.

Whatever responsibility belongs to FIFA, individual sellers or marketplaces, panelists said the consumer experiences the same result when a promised ticket does not arrive.

Speculative ticketing was another area where panelists saw an opportunity for clearer standards and stronger self-regulation.

Some sellers list tickets before an event’s initial sale with the expectation that they will later obtain inventory. Others possess season-ticket rights, contractual commitments or other forms of constructive possession that make future delivery substantially more certain.

Consumers usually cannot distinguish between those circumstances.

Berry said buyers should always be able to tell whether they are purchasing a ticket already controlled by the seller or engaging a separately disclosed service to procure one later.

Freeman said listings appearing before an event’s initial presale are particularly damaging, even when they never result in a transaction.

“I hate, hate, hate when we see listings before the initial presales happen,” Freeman said.

Extraordinary asking prices create a similar reputational problem.

A seller may regard an $18,000 listing as a harmless attempt to test the market. Because no buyer has agreed to pay that price, the listing does not establish what the ticket is worth.

But the screenshot can still become evidence presented to lawmakers as an example of systematic gouging.

Opaque fulfillment timelines also undermine consumer trust.

Potter described purchasing tickets for an Auburn football game and learning only after completing the transaction that the tickets might not be delivered until within two hours of kickoff.

“That is a trust violation,” Potter said. “I immediately regretted buying those tickets, and I’m on your side.”

He suggested that marketplaces consider seller-accountability tools comparable to ratings used in other ecommerce sectors. Buyers currently may not know whether an order will be fulfilled by a seller with thousands of successful transactions or one with a pattern of broken sales.

Marketplaces should also be willing to remove sellers whose conduct creates unacceptable risks, Freeman said.

“If you are not a professional reseller running your business in the correct pro-consumer way, I want you off our platform,” Freeman said. “I want you out of our business, because you are at risk of bringing us all down.”

The panel’s call for stronger standards did not concede that price caps or restrictions on competition are justified.

Instead, panelists argued that an industry seeking to preserve an open marketplace has a corresponding obligation to ensure that consumers understand what they are buying and can depend on professional sellers to fulfill their commitments.

Potter summarized that responsibility in two words:

“Police thyself.”

Resale Advocates Plan to Move From Defense to Offense

The panelists rejected the idea that the resale industry is already losing the legislative contest.

Berry said approximately 13 price-control proposals failed to advance during the current state legislative cycle. Measures enacted in Vermont and approved in Washington, D.C., attracted considerably more public attention, but did not represent the complete legislative record.

Panelists said those outcomes preserved consumer access to competitive marketplaces in states where lawmakers chose not to impose price controls.

The industry is now preparing for another substantial wave of proposals in 2027, along with a potential federal opportunity for the TICKET Act.

The House passed the TICKET Act by a 409-15 vote in April 2025. Senate Commerce Committee leaders continued to identify the legislation as a bipartisan priority during a January 2026 ticketing hearing.

The federal measure focuses on all-in pricing, disclosures, refunds, deceptive websites, bot enforcement and speculative listings rather than imposing a national resale price cap.

Resale advocates said they also intend to pursue affirmative state legislation protecting ticket transferability, open distribution and competition rather than remaining permanently on defense.

The objective is not simply to defeat regulations sought by competing business interests.

It is to establish that consumers benefit when they can compare tickets across multiple marketplaces, control tickets they have purchased and choose among platforms competing on price, service and reliability.

That case also requires the industry to demonstrate that competition does not mean accepting deceptive listings, unreliable fulfillment or sellers who repeatedly fail consumers.

Marketplaces can defend a ticket holder’s right to resell while removing bad actors. They can oppose price controls while improving disclosures. They can preserve legitimate procurement services while ensuring buyers understand when inventory has not yet been secured. They can provide refunds when transactions fail while continuing to reduce the failures that make those refunds necessary.

Supporters of price controls have frequently framed the debate as a contest between fans and professional resellers.

Panelists said the industry must broaden that discussion to include the consequences of giving original sellers additional authority over ticket prices, distribution and subsequent transfers.

The panel’s message was therefore not that the resale industry is powerless against an increasingly coordinated legislative campaign.

It was that the industry has developed the organization, policy experience and consumer reach required to make a stronger affirmative case—and that many of its most important improvements are within its own control.

After a year spent largely responding to proposals written by its opponents, resale advocates said they intend to enter 2027 with proposals of their own: policies designed to protect consumers without sacrificing ticket ownership, marketplace choice or competition.

Sean Burns is the Director of Communications and Public Affairs at TicketNetwork and a former editor at TicketNews.