Imagine, purely as a hypothetical, that you are a ticket speculator with fast software and no tickets. You go online and list seats to a sold-out concert at a fat markup. You do not own these seats. Nobody does — the show’s actual tickets haven’t even gone on sale yet. But if a fan buys your listing, you now have a strong incentive to go acquire the ticket and deliver it, and if you can’t, you have the fan’s money and the fan has, at best, a refund process. This product is known as a “ghost ticket,” or speculative ticketing, and the buyer often can’t tell it apart from the real thing, because the listing looks exactly like every other listing.
California has now decided this should be illegal. On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1349, a bipartisan measure that bans the sale of tickets the seller doesn’t yet own and prohibits using software to manipulate a venue’s purchasing restrictions. “Buying a ticket shouldn’t come with hidden risks or unfair practices,” Newsom wrote on social media. Sellers who violate it could face misdemeanor charges and penalties, and ticket resellers are required to “implement reasonable measures” to prevent speculative listings.
The bill’s author, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Culver City Democrat, got interested after he and a friend searched for Hollywood Bowl tickets and found expensive listings posted before tickets had actually gone on sale. “Many fans buy these tickets not knowing that they are listed at a price greater than they would actually be when they eventually go on sale,” he said at a June hearing. “In the worst instances, fans never actually acquire the ticket that they paid for, leaving our small venues in California ultimately on the hook.”
So far, so straightforward. The entertaining part is who ended up on which side. Live Nation, the entertainment giant that owns Ticketmaster, supported the bill early. “No one should be able to scam fans by listing tickets they don’t have,” the company said in a January statement — a position that is both obviously correct and, critics noted, extremely convenient for a company that would quite like its resale competitors regulated into the ground.
StubHub, the resale marketplace, lobbied heavily against the bill, spending $4.4 million over the two-year legislative session to influence it and several others. And then, in a surprise, StubHub supported the final version, which is less favorable to Live Nation. Live Nation has not responded to a request for comment from CalMatters, which reported the saga.
What changed? The bill, per CalMatters, changed dramatically in the final days of the session. The National Independent Venue Association — which supported the original version, opposed the final one and urged Newsom to veto it — argues the signed law exempts resale marketplaces from being classified as speculative ticket sellers, “even though every speculative sale happens on their platforms.” Critics pointed to StubHub as the platform that appeared to be exempt.
Newsom seems to agree there is something odd in there. “While there may be good reasons for exempting certain sellers from the bill’s provisions, such a carve-out deserves further discussion, and I encourage the author to work with stakeholders to refine this policy,” he wrote in his signing statement, without naming names. He signed it anyway and asked lawmakers to revisit it, which is the legislative equivalent of approving the merger while noting the antitrust concerns.
The venue association’s other complaint is that the liability landed on the wrong people. Its leaders worry independent venues and promoters could break the law just by selling presale, VIP or waitlisted tickets. AB 1349 “puts the small businesses and nonprofits that put on shows every night at risk,” executive director Stephen Parker said in a written statement.
Lawmakers had also considered a companion bill capping resale markups at 10%, which is the version of this fight that would actually determine what fans pay. It stalled in August in the Senate Appropriations Committee. So California now has a law banning the sale of imaginary tickets, with a carve-out the governor himself flagged, written in a way the venues say criminalizes their presales. The part where tickets cost less got left in committee.