Pascrell Hails Oversight of Ticket Industry

Hearing today represents new front examining corruption and nontransparency bedeviling live events fans

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today praised the hearing the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held on potential unfair and deceptive practices currently racking the live events ticketing industry. Pascrell is the author of H.R. 3248, the Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing (BOSS Act), landmark legislation to fix the corrupted live events ticket market.

“Today’s groundbreaking hearing has helped to expose the utter lack of transparency and even corruption rampant in the live events ticketing industry,” said Rep. Pascrell, who has been pursuing regulation of the industry for over a decade. “For far too long, millions of American fans just trying to get a little entertainment have been victimized by an endless conga line of deceptive practices, hidden fees, add-ons, and gimmicks created by the ticketing industry. Congress is moving to finally clean up live events ticketing. The testimony today highlights the need to for our BOSS Act legislation to require common sense measures, including all-in ticket pricing, for this industry. Fans have waited long enough for relief and I want to thank Chairman Frank Pallone and Chairwoman Diana DeGette for their important oversight work.”

Congressman Pascrell has been a leader in Congress calling for regulation of the opaque live events ticket market. Pascrell was an early critic of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, and repeatedly urged the Obama administration to reject it, warning that the union would crush competition and harm consumers. In May 2018, Pascrell wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on his attempts to impose greater positive regulation on the broken live events ticket market.

Two months later, Reps. Pascrell and Pallone wrote a letter to Federal Trade Commission chairman Joseph Simons highlighting a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study which found a myriad of consumer protection and competition issues in the primary and secondary live event ticket markets. The GAO report was commissioned in response to Pallone and Pascrell’s work, and the members urged Simons to do more to protect consumers in the marketplace. In response, the FTC organized a workshop on event tickets held in June 2019 to review many of the challenges faced by ticket-buying fans.

In September 2018, Pascrell was featured in the wide-ranging investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation into corruption in the live events ticket marketplace. Pascrell’s interview segment is available here, and the next month Pascrell wrote a letter to then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling for the U.S. Justice Department to open an investigation of continued market corruption by Ticketmaster.

Pascrell is the principal sponsor of the BOSS Act, overarching legislation that will impose a basic level of transparency to the ticket industry so fans have a fair chance to purchase tickets on the primary market and also seeks to protect consumers who choose to use the secondary market to purchase tickets. The legislation is currently being considered by the Energy and Commerce Committee and has been endorsed by a range of consumer protection groups. The BOSS Act’s components are detailed below.

Primary marketplace provisions

• Requirements for all-in pricing to ensure ticket sellers disclose all ancillary charges before customers select a ticket for purchase.
• Transparency in use of holdbacks.
• Restrictions on preventing reselling or instituting a price floor on tickets.
• Disclosure of refund policies.

Secondary marketplace provision

• Transparency in the sale of speculative tickets.
• Disclosure to purchasers when the secondary seller is the primary ticket seller, venue, team, or artist associated with the event.
• Requirements for all-in pricing to ensure ticket sellers disclose all ancillary charges in price quotes and advertisements before customers select a ticket for purchase.
• Prohibitions on employees of venues, primary ticket sellers, teams, artists, online resale marketplaces, or box offices involved in hosting, promoting, performing in, or selling tickets to knowingly resell tickets at a higher price.
• Restrictions on selling a ticket for the same seat to more than one person at the same time.

A full section-by-section breakdown of the legislation is available here.

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