Game and concert tickets will be harder to get rid of under new Massachusetts law
BOSTON - If you buy tickets to a concert or game in Massachusetts and suddenly can't go, it's going to be a lot harder to get rid of them.
Massachusetts ticket sales law
Buried in the massive Economic Development Bill signed by Gov. Maura Healey on Wednesday is a clause that gives companies like Ticketmaster more control over who gets your tickets if you can't make it to the event. The new law limits who fans can transfer tickets to.
Consumer watchdog groups like MASSPIRG disagree with it, saying people should be able to do whatever they want with the tickets that they bought.
"I can't resell it to anybody I want, I can't give it to my friends or family if I can't go and so it's really harming fans," said Deirdre Cummings of MASSPIRG.
An executive from Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, defended the law, saying the goal is to prevent ticket scalping.
"It's about whether the professional ticket brokers and the ticket resale sites that support them can use their bots and all their other tactics to grab thousands and thousands of tickets that were meant for real fans and instead put them on resale markets where they're going to double the price," said Dan Wall, the vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs for Live Nation.
How the new ticket law works in Massachusetts
For example, if you buy tickets to a Boston Celtics game from Ticketmaster or SeatGeek and you can no longer go, the new law requires you to sell tickets on the original platform you bought them from, rather than on other secondary markets, as long as the company lets you know of the policy first.
"Ticketmaster will buy it at a lower face value and then sell it at a higher one," Cummings told WBZ-TV. "And so that's what keeps the ticket prices elevated."
Live Nation argues the new law protects artists, sports teams and fans.
"This is not about a person who gets sick and can't go to a show," said Wall.
Customers aren't happy about it.
"If somebody else wants to go to that show, they're willing to pay that market rate for it, that opportunity's between those two consumers. Ticketmaster doesn't need to have anything to do with that," customer Shawn Eagle told WBZ.
"Fans and ticket holders really got the wrong end of the deal," Cummings said.
In a statement, ticket reseller StubHub called the law anti-competitive and they're urging lawmakers to revisit the language in the law.
