How the Eras tour ticketing debacle reflects – and distorts – US industry reform
by Laura Snapes, The Guardian
March 6, 2024
….“Companies like StubHub, Vivid Seat, SeatGeek have been rather successful in appropriating legitimate public frustration with Ticketmaster to advance an unrelated policy agenda that’s mostly about maximising their access to inventory, to continue to be able to get as many tickets as possible and sell them at inflated prices,” he says. Erickson explains that BOSS SWIFT would eliminate legitimately helpful fan-to-fan resale sites and require “transparency of [holdbacks]”, meaning that artists and venues have to disclose how many tickets will ultimately be available ahead of sale. “That sounds reasonable until you understand that that’s incredibly helpful to the brokers making their purchasing decisions,” he says. “It doesn’t benefit the individual family who just wants to buy a ticket to be able to attend the event.”
Fortunately again, says Erickson, the bill lacks support from the musician community and is unlikely to pass. There’s also the Fans First Act, which requires full advance fee disclosure to avoid surprises at the checkout, strengthens the 2016 the Better Online Tickets Sales Act and prevents speculative ticketing, though it may succumb to the slow roll of Congress. “The artist community is prepared for the passage of federal legislation to be a longer fight,” says Erickson. “These reforms take time but there’s also the incremental reforms in the states that help tell the more accurate story of what the problems are, who’s responsible for them and, in time, help us build federal momentum as well.”
[…]“If the most powerful woman in the music industry can’t control the problem of unregulated resale, clearly that’s an indication that elected officials have to step up. That neoliberal, ‘let the market take care of itself’ approach has profoundly failed artists and consumers.” This moment, he says, could highlight the value of live music beyond the price of a ticket. “There is an opportunity here to accomplish a shift in how we think of music and the arts and live events as not just about something that has economic value, but to talk about the intrinsic value of live music as a vehicle by which communities form, a vehicle for historically marginalised voices to be heard, a way that communities define themselves. Policymakers at all levels have a responsibility to centre the voices of music communities who are imperilled by the rise of extractive business models.”