New Bill in California Aims to Force Ticketmaster to Play Nice With Others

A new bill introduced by an influential California state senator takes aim at Ticketmaster, whose stranglehold on the entertainment industry has long vexed concertgoers with its fees and out-of-control pricing.

Democrat Buffy Wicks, who currently serves as the chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee, has introduced legislation that her office says would give event-goers substantially more options when it comes to purchasing tickets for events. Politico, which was first to report on Wicks’s new legislation, describes a policy that would “lift restrictions” on the resale of tickets while creating more options for consumers. Wicks envisions a future scenario more akin to the consumer experience of travel websites, where event-goers have a choice between a variety of different sellers, not just one omnipotent platform.

Wicks legislation takes aim at “exclusivity” clauses, which have historically allowed platforms like Ticketmaster to lay claim to venues, barring them from contracting with other ticket sellers that would give consumers options. As some commentators have noted, Ticketmaster’s exclusivity contracts effectively put venues up against a wall, forcing them to accept the company’s draconian terms or risk being unable to book the massive stars that Ticketmaster keeps for itself.

Wicks legislation, AB2808, was introduced in the California state legislature in February and would force ticket sellers like Ticketmaster to include an API that allows competing sellers to offer tickets for an event on their own platform. The bill would further make it “unlawful” for a ticketing provider or a venue “to provide [ticketing] services” on an “exclusive or discriminatory basis, as specified,” presumably referring to an exclusive arrangement in which companies like Ticketmaster hog all the ticket sales. The bill would also free up the ticket reseller market, allowing for greater options for consumers. Firms that were found to be in violation of the law’s stipulations would be ordered to pay fines.

“We want to make sure that we have competition and choice for consumers so we don’t end up with situations like the Taylor Swift concerts—like ‘Lord of the Flies’ attempts to get tickets,” Wicks told Politico.

Ticketmaster has been the de facto place to buy concert and sporting events tickets ever since it completed a $2.5 billion merger with Live Nation, a massive venue operator, in 2010. The merger thrust two industry giants into each other’s arms, thus creating what very much looks like and functions as a monopoly. Some projections estimate that the two companies jointly control 70 percent of the ticketed events market. Although Ticketmaster has been a pestilence on the American concert-goer for years, regulators really only started paying attention after the company massively flubbed the ticket sales for mega pop star Taylor Swift’s Eras tour last year. During said debacle, the Ticketmaster site surged with so much traffic that it broke, spurring mass outrage and chaos in the Swiftie community. Not long afterward, the platform canceled ticket sales for the Eras tour, citing a lack of inventory and enraging fans.

Will Wicks’ legislation do anything? It’s hard to say. Laws are introduced every day in America and most of them go nowhere. Last year, multiple California legislators introduced legislation designed to pry loose Ticketmaster’s powerful grip on the ticketing industry; all of those attempts were thwarted by intensive lobbying efforts from industry groups.

Gizmodo reached out to Ticketmaster and Wicks for comment and will update this story if they respond.

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