Washington has all the time led in music — from Jimi Hendrix reinventing the guitar to Nirvana, Pearl Jam and grunge defining the sound and look of the Nineteen Nineties.
Native artists have additionally led the battle in opposition to skyrocketing ticket costs and runaway scalpers and bots. Pearl Jam pioneered the concept of artists taking again energy from ticketing corporations to verify actual followers may get their arms on first rate and reasonably priced seats.
However new laws, House Bill 1648, launched by Rep. Kristine Reeves, D-Federal Means, would undo these features and ship costs skyrocketing for Washington live shows as soon as once more — tying artists’ arms and giving the facility Pearl Jam and so many others fought to win to massive industrial resellers.
To be clear, new “all in” pricing disclosure guidelines will cease corporations from piling on complicated junk charges by requiring the primary worth a fan sees be the ultimate worth they pay. And up to date language will stage the taking part in area within the arms race between actual followers and scalper’s bots. These are welcome modifications we assist.
However the core of the invoice sacrifices followers and artists to prop up billion-dollar resale corporations and the skilled brokers and scalpers making up an awesome majority of the gross sales on these websites.
The largest drawback is the invoice’s ban on fan-to-fan face-value exchanges that many artists use to close down extortionate resale markets. By limiting resale to face-value exchanges, artists shield followers unable to make use of their tickets, giving them a method to recoup what they paid whereas avoiding price-gouging on broker-powered reseller websites. This provides followers a second likelihood at reasonably priced seats whereas eliminating the motivation for resellers and bots to crash ticket releases and scoop up premium seats within the first place.
Knowledge confirms artist-empowered face-value exchanges are profitable in defending followers. In July 2023, the Nationwide Impartial Expertise Group launched a study evaluating states the place The Remedy used face-value exchanges versus states the place they’ve been banned. The findings had been clear: Followers save hundreds of thousands when artists can use expertise to maintain costs down.
- In California, the variety of tickets resold and reseller income had been 92% to 99% lower than in states like New York and Illinois, which ban resale restrictions.
- The Remedy’s resold tickets in Chicago had been on common 396% above face worth.
- One other arena-level artist utilizing fan-to-fan face-value exchanges had equally dramatic outcomes. There have been simply 44 complete tickets resold for his or her three California exhibits, however greater than 1,000 tickets resold for a single New York Metropolis present the place the typical worth was 712% greater than the typical face-value worth.
The invoice additionally endorses dangerous “speculative” or “spec” ticketing, the place brokers promote seats earlier than they’ve possession of a ticket. Ticket scalpers take shoppers’ cash up entrance and use these funds to attempt to procure a ticket by any means needed. Once they can’t, followers might not discover out till the day of the live performance, leaving them with no ticket. This not solely artificially inflates ticket costs, but in addition causes confusion at venue field workplaces and blocks on a regular basis shoppers from procuring actual face-value tickets.
By permitting speculative gross sales if they supply minimal disclosures, the invoice truly validates and endorses them. Fixing this problem is straightforward: Resellers ought to need to have possession of a ticket earlier than itemizing it.
Rep. Reeves has described her laws as pro-consumer however sadly, the one stakeholders it’s going to assist are resellers, which is why they and their astroturf groups are the one ones who assist it.
Washington legislators mustn’t assist a invoice that elevates the proper of brokers and resale platforms over Washington artists and followers.
