Sacramento Democrats are pushing a pair of “consumer protection” ticketing bills — but critics say the real winner could be the same powerhouse already accused of dominating the market: Live Nation.
Assemblymembers Isaac Bryan and Matt Haney are touting their proposals as a crackdown on shady ticket sales. Both measures, however, are backed by Live Nation — the parent company of Ticketmaster — raising eyebrows across the industry.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Just this week, a federal jury in New York found Live Nation illegally acted as a monopoly, a case pursued in part by Rob Bonta. Now, with penalties looming, the company is backing legislation critics warn could tighten its grip even further.
Opponents aren’t buying the “consumer protection” pitch.
“The state Legislature should really be standing up for consumers instead of advancing bills that are there to help a monopoly that has been caught on record calling its fans stupid and has bragged about robbing them blind,” said Jose Barrera, national vice president for the far west region at the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Rival resale platforms like StubHub, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats are sounding the alarm — and spending big to fight back — warning the bills could kneecap competition.
“Passing laws that hand the Ticketmaster monopoly more power and don’t actually make tickets more affordable is the last thing California’s leaders should do,” Jack Sterne, StubHub’s head of policy communications told CalMatters.
At the center of the fight is Bryan’s bill, which would ban the sale of speculative tickets — listings for seats sellers don’t actually own. Supporters insist it’s about stopping price gouging.
Essentially it would mean a $100 ticket could not legally be resold for more than $110.
But skeptics say it could hand Live Nation unprecedented control over tickets even after they’re sold.
“There’s no consumer choice in the matter,” said Robert Herrell of the Consumer Federation of California. “They can keep people out of shows if they want to. There have been situations where, if you bought a ticket on the secondary market, you’ve been denied entry into a show.”
Haney’s bill goes even further, slapping a 10% cap on resale markups — a move critics say could backfire by crushing the resale market entirely.
“If you shut down the resale market with price caps then guess what? Ticket buyers have no place to go but right back to Ticketmaster,” said Diana Moss of the Progressive Policy Institute. “If (Live Nation) succeed(s) in decimating the resale market, then they steer millions and millions of fans back to their own ticketing platform where they charge monopoly ticket fees and where fans are hostage to their glitchy online platform and all of their data, privacy and security concerns that we always hear about in the news.”
Live Nation insists the bills are about protecting fans, not power.
“The resale lobby constantly tries to change the subject by pointing fingers at Ticketmaster, even though it has less than 25% of the resale market. This has nothing to do with anyone’s monopoly, but rather is about protecting fans from scalpers and the resale sites that cater to them.”
Despite the growing skepticism, both bills are cruising through the Legislature — leaving critics wondering whether Sacramento is cracking down on scalpers… or quietly handing the industry’s biggest player even more control.
