At the Senate Judiciary Committee, lawmakers and experts are discussing the issue of ticket transferability and whether that is hurting or benefitting consumers in the ticketing market.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana asked witnesses on the hearing panel if making tickets non-transferable would help in capping the price of the ticket and weeding out the issue of bots, which would in turn benefit customers.
While Live Nation President Joe Berchtold supported the suggestion, antitrust expert Kathleen Bradish said such a solution wouldn’t get to the heart of the matter because it doesn’t solve the competition issue.
“If there were competition, if we solve the competition issue here, then customers will get what they want,” she told lawmakers.
SeatGeek CEO Jack Groetzinger echoed Bradish, and said that in an industry that already lacks competition, “reducing transferability just exacerbates the problem.”
“A related issue is if the incumbent were to allow transferability but only on its own platform,” he added. “It’s a way to force all consumer data and all transaction fees onto that platform.”
Another expert on the panel, Sal Nuzzo, also disagreed with Kennedy’s proposed solution, saying that if a customer buys a ticket, they should be able to “transfer that ticket at the market rate.”
The secondary market, Nuzzo argued, also allows smaller or growing artists “the ability to fill those venues” especially when it comes to people who purchased the ticket but are unable to show up for individual reasons.
When Sen. Josh Hawley asked Live Nation’s Berchtold why the executive thinks restricting the ability to transfer tickets would help the customer, he pointed to bots.
“Tickets are often underpriced by the artists because they want to deliver value to the fans. That creates a $5 billion opportunity a year in the United States for the industrial scalping of tickets using bots … and resell them on the secondary (market,)” he said, arguing that this illegal activity is aided by the ease of ticket transfer option.
