NY bill aims to target scalpers and cap ticket fees
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10)-- Some state lawmakers are trying to pass a bill that aims to fix ticket purchases. However, opponents of the legislation argue it could negatively impact consumers.
With only three weeks left of the legislative session, Senator James Skoufis is looking to pass a bill that he said will make purchasing tickets for live events more fair for the everyday New Yorker.
According to Skoufis, it would allow the artist to opt in to prohibiting people from selling the tickets for profit.
"What happens is scalpers gobble up thousands and thousands of those tickets and just sell them at marked up— sometimes 5 times, 10 times the price, so the average fan gets locked out and only rich fans are filling so many thousands of those seats," explained Skoufis.
The senator said his bill would stop that from happening. It would also cap fees at 25% and address tickets being set aside for promoters.
"If you’ve got a Taylor Swift concert--- 40,000 seats, I promise you at least 10,000 of those seats are held aside for platinum credit card company members and other VIPS, friends and families of promoters."
The bill would require the disclosure of the number of tickets being reserved.
While the Coalition for Ticket Fairness does support ticket holdback transparency, over all it strongly opposes the bill.
"Resale restrictions at face value or below without any freemarket ability is something that is very anti-consumer, so we kind of get hung up on that and can’t move past it," explained Dana McLean, Executive Director of Coalition for Ticket Fairness
The last day of the legislative session is June 17th.