Issues
The live events industry in Texas is being taken over by big corporations. Those companies want to control the Texas ticket industry to enrich themselves. They do this by eliminating local competition and restricting the rights of ticket buyers in Texas. Consumers in Texas benefit from the choice that a free ticket market provides. Fans pay less for tickets when there is robust competition to influence ticket prices. The Texas Ticket Sellers Association (TTSA) purpose is to establish competitive balance in the Texas ticket industry. The TTSA wants fans to have choice when buying tickets. We do not want big corporations to dictate the terms under which Texans enjoy our favorite live events.
Transferability
Primary ticket distributor can restrict where tickets are bought, sold, and on which ticket platform they must be transferred. They can force every fan to use only their platform to buy, sell or transfer tickets. The primary ticket distributor can set their own terms on whether tickets can be resold, for how much, and even when those tickets can be transferred.
The customer who buys a ticket should never lose control over the ability to sell or transfer the ticket they bought.
Price Disclosures
Ticket buyers do not know the (face value) ticket price during an on-sale until they login by sharing their personal information. Those ticket buyers are dropped into a timed buying queue without any idea of ticket prices.
Ticket sellers should be required to disclose upfront, and before a customer enters their personal information, the full “all in” ticket price which includes all fees. Every on-sale should have a requirement to disclose upfront the “face value” ticket prices as well as how many tickets will be “dynamically priced” during that on-sale.
Revoking Tickets to Aggregate Inventory
Teams endorse the resale of tickets through partnerships with their official ticket marketplaces. Then use reselling tickets as the reason they are taking away tickets from long-time season ticket holders and ticket sellers. The teams then give the tickets they reclaim to their preferred ticket reseller/aggregator to resell at highest prices possible. This practice is inconsistent, hypocritical, and hurts fans. By eliminating competition, fans pay higher ticket prices and have less choice in buying tickets. Worse it allows price floors to be set on tickets which eliminates all cheap tickets which a fan can buy in a free market.
Teams that openly endorse reselling tickets, and allow their season ticket holders to resell tickets should not then be allowed to use reselling tickets as the reason they are revoking tickets from fans or season ticket holders.
Inaction on Bots
Ticketmaster blame bots whenever a ticket on-sale goes awry. They complain publicly without disclosing the information they have on the bad actors using bots to buy tickets. Texas authorities are powerless to uphold the laws against fraudulent bot use without Ticketmaster’s data.
Ticketmaster should be required to turn over to Texas authorities the information they get on each on-sale about bad actors using bots to buy tickets. That provides Texas authorities the ability to pursue the bad actors using bots.
Eliminate Look-alike Venue Websites
There are hundreds of websites setup to confuse consumers into thinking they are purchasing tickets from the official venue site. Fans purchase tickets from these look-alike sites mistakenly thinking they are buying from official venue site.
Deceptive, look-alike venue websites should be removed from search engines. Those involved in creating them should be compelled to work with authorities to eliminate them.
