Imagine this situation.
You’re running late and won’t be able to make the Keith Urban concert you bought tickets to attend. You call a friend to ask if he can use them. He is thrilled and says he will drop by your office to pick up the tickets. But wait, you don’t have actual tickets. The tickets are tied to your credit card and photo ID and nontransferable.
What happened to concert tickets? Doesn’t a ticket belong to the person who bought it, and shouldn’t they be able to give away or resell their ticket if they can’t make it?
But sports teams, concert promoters, event venues and ticket companies have been working behind the scenes to restrict what consumers can do with the tickets they’ve purchased.
According to the ticket industry, tickets don’t belong to the purchaser. The ticket industry prohibits the right to give away or re-sell the tickets.
Fortunately for California consumers, a remedy is now available in the form of AB 329, authored by Assemblyman Richard Pan.
AB 329 is the Ticket Holder’s Bill of Rights and it will restore the ticket market to what it was before these restrictions, when the ticket you bought was your property.
And more importantly it will break the power of ticket sellers, event promoters and sports teams to monopolize the ticket industry and stifle competition.
Whether buying a ticket for a Keith Urban concert or buying a new car, if you pay with your money it is yours.
Imagine a car dealer saying you couldn’t buy a car and then give it to your son or daughter or resell it to friend. Californians would not stand for it, and we should allow the industry to do the same thing to our sports or concert tickets.
AB 329 will correct this problem and we urge Californians to contact their elected representatives to support this common sense consumer protection legislation.