DC Council seeks to crackdown on ticket brokers and scalpers
Legislation has been introduced in the D.C. Council to significantly crackdown against ticket resellers and other middlemen.
Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen said he has the support of a majority of area music venues and the council, and anticipates the measure could get a public hearing sometime this summer before being passed by the full council in the fall.
Standing on stage at a live music venue at The Wharf with dozens of musicians and others in the live music industry on Tuesday, Allen said he’s taking aim at the secondary ticket market platforms, including StubHub, Vivid Seats, TicketNetwork, Ticket Center and SeatGeek.
He is seeking to put a 10% cap on the resale price of tickets for individuals and businesses that sell more than 50 tickets a year. Those operations and people would also have to register with the city.
“Concertgoers, pure and simple, are getting price gouged,” Allen said. “Right now, people who want to go to a live show in D.C. are competing against companies and scalpers who make a lot of money by immediately scooping up as many tickets as possible and reselling them at a much higher cost than the venue or the performer is asking.”
Allen’s legislation, which is called the Restricting Egregious Scalping Against Live Entertainment (RESALE) Act, already has eight sponsors on the council.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb supports the measure, as his office has tangoed with the ticket resale industry before — most recently last July when he sued StubHub, accusing the ticket resale platform of advertising deceptively low prices and then ramping up prices with extra fees.
Allen’s bill appears to have widespread support in the music and concert venue industry. Two prominent groups are now backing it — the National Independent Venue Association and IMP, which runs numerous venues in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, including Merriweather Post Pavilion, the Anthem and the Lincoln Theatre.
Audrey Fix Schaefer, the head of communications at IMP, said resellers are making live music events unaffordable for most people.
“If people get gouged, buying $500 for a ticket that, in theory, costs $50, that means that’s nine shows they’re not going to attend,” she said.
Officials at the news conference said live music events in D.C. at venues such as Nationals Park or smaller, more intimate facilities are a multimillion dollar a year business, and they believe in the long run, ticket brokers will do serious damage to the industry.
“The biggest threat to live entertainment in the District and across the nation is ticket fraud, which is running rampant across the internet,” said Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association.
Officials in the ticket resale business are urging the city council not to pass the bill.
“At StubHub, we believe fans deserve secure, transparent, and flexible access to live events. We support reforms that empower consumers — but this proposal will only push fans away from safe, regulated platforms and into unregulated and underground channels where fraud thrives. These policies ignore the real issue: a primary market dominated by a single player who repeatedly fails fans and blocks any competition,” the company said in a statement to WTOP.
Allen said his legislation would act as a deterrent because the fines are steep: $5,000 for each offense and $10,000 for each subsequent offense.
Allen’s legislation would also spell out specific procedures for consumers to obtain refunds.
The legislation is similar to a measure that was signed into law in July 2024 in Maryland. It outlaws speculative tickets and holds ticketing platforms accountable for the validity of the tickets they sell.