On an average, only about 46 percent of tickets for events are reserved for the public, said the report released Thursday, which analyzed data from Live Nation and AEG on top-grossing shows in ny during 2012 to 2015.
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“My office will continue to crack down on those who break our laws, prey on ordinary consumers, and deny New Yorkers affordable access to the concerts and sporting events they love”, Schneiderman said in a statement.
Even tickets to free events, such as Pope Francis’ appearance in Central Park last September, are quickly acquired and resold at high prices on such sites, the report said.
In some cases, tickets are either put on “hold” and reserved for “a variety of industry insiders including the venues, artists or promoters”, Schneiderman said.
Yet the AG’s office “found an average surcharge of 21% of the face value of a ticket, which amounts to nearly $8 in fees on average”.
Schneiderman also announced settlements with two ticket brokers that were illegally operating without a ticket reseller license.
The report also drew attention to the increasing imposition of resale price floors, which fixes the bottom line for ticket prices, and also the efforts to have tickets sold in a single “walled garden” market, as opposed to consumers having the option of buying these tickets from various resale platforms.
Many people shared their frustration on Facebook.
Brokers used software known as ticket bots to automate the purchase of large quantities of tickets and later resold the tickets with markups that sometimes exceeded 1,000%. The report cited one unlicensed ticket vendor who sold early $31 million worth of tickets on StubHub alone in 2013, netting a profit of $16 million. It’s possible that the league simply doesn’t want fans to get accustomed to the availability of tickets at prices below the prices applied to them by the teams. And many of those tickets that are set aside also end up in the hands of brokers, according to Schneiderman. The investigation confirms that hundreds of thousands of tickets are being acquired using illegal software. First, buyers of tickets on Ticket Exchange or other sites with price floors are frequently not informed that the tickets they are buying are subject to a floor.
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The report questions service fees, which under NY law are prohibited unless “reasonable” and connected to the provision of a “special service”. And he proposes revoking the “paperless ticket ban” to make a purchase harder to transfer, and to require concertgoers to bring the purchasing credit card to pick up their tickets.
