Letter to the editor: Ticket price controls would hurt D.C.

Commentary

OPINION:

The D.C. Council recently held a hearing on the Resale Act, which would cap the resale price of tickets in the city at 10% above face value. Although this problem is real, I, like Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration, fear that the proposed fix is the wrong one and risks hurting the very Washingtonians it is meant to help.

Many D.C. fans justify the cost of subscription ticket packages by reselling a handful of high-demand shows. If the council imposes a cap, they will no longer be able to do so and fewer people will buy these packages. That would be bad for the District’s cultural fabric and economy.

Every ticket package sold includes the District’s admissions tax on entertainment events. The arts, entertainment and recreation industry generates $5 billion of the District’s gross domestic product annually. Jeopardizing that tax base would be a costly mistake.

Likely because sporting events compose the bulk of the District’s revenue, the Resale Act already exempts sports games from the cap. Still, the council shouldn’t hang patrons of the District’s other entertainment venues out to dry.

We can stop the corporate brokers who have inflated the cost of tickets in the District of Columbia without penalizing everyone else. How? By stopping the brokers who use sophisticated software, known colloquially as “bot” purchasers, to swipe up thousands of tickets before ordinary residents have a chance.

Congress outlawed this practice in 2016, but enforcement has been weak. In fact, according to a September Federal Trade Commission lawsuit, Live Nation/Ticketmaster, the monopoly controlling almost all U.S. ticket sales, has knowingly allowed these bots to run rampant. No wonder. They allow Ticketmaster’s events to sell out faster. These bots make the company a second profit once the scalpers relist their tickets on Ticketmaster.

Although the Resale Act states that ticket companies must use “reasonable technology” to stop bots, the language is highly subjective and borders on being unenforceable. It must be strengthened.

The council should amend the Resale Act to make it mirror the federal anti-bots law, empowering private litigation to stop the bots and Ticketmaster’s enabling of them. That might not work for Ticketmaster and the Ticketmaster-connected groups pushing the Resale Act, such as the I.M.P. Coalition, which uses the company as its exclusive ticketing partner, but it will work for the rest of us.