Act Now for the Real Tickets, Real Fans Act!
On Monday, April 27th, Arts Caucus Co-Chair Senator Jay Chaudhuri filed the Real Tickets, Real Fans Act (S849) with primary sponsors: Arts Caucus Co-Chair Senator Vickie Sawyer, and Regulatory Reform Committee Chair Senator Timothy Moffitt. The purpose of the bill is to stop the rampant gouging and cheating of patrons by ticket resellers to live events in North Carolina through misleading and dishonest sales practices. Arts North Carolina has been working on this problem with legislators, the NC Presenters Consortium, the NC Travel and Tourism Coalition, and the National Independent Venue Association for well over a year.
A national study shows that 81% of venues report the unauthorized resale of their tickets. Related, 61% of venues report patrons arriving with fraudulent or unusable tickets. To minimize the damage to the patron, 75% of these venues will attempt to provide admission at no charge, effectively giving away the performance for free, which hurts our local businesses, artists and our state’s whole creative economy. To stop this in North Carolina the Real Tickets, Real Fans Act (S849) would:
- Require ticket resellers to be transparent, clearly identifying themselves as resellers.
- Ban deceptive language, images, and URLs that resellers use when pretending to be primary sellers or to be endorsed by the primary seller.
- Require resellers to provide weblinks to the primary seller so consumers have a choice.
- Ban all speculative ticket sales, stopping the sale of tickets a seller does not possess.
- Ban the use of “bots” to circumvent sales restrictions.
It ONLY takes two minutes to write to your NC Senator and urge them to support the Real Tickets, Real Fans Act (S849) to stop dishonest resellers from cheating fans, hurting artists, and damaging small businesses and nonprofits across the state.
There are plenty of real-life examples from around the state. Christopher thought he purchased tickets from Carolina Civic Center Historic Theater in Lumberton for a Motown show there but didn’t realize he was on a reseller site using the venue’s name and logo. Original ticket price? $30. The price he ended up paying: $100.
David L went to the Carolina Theatre of Durham, with his $600 pair of tickets that he purchased through a reseller (the face value was $50), which were completely fake and not attached to actual seats.
Kyle arrived at the J.E. Broyhill Civic Center in Lenoir only to learn that the $200/seat tickets he purchased would have cost him just $42/seat through the venue and that no refund could be given because the credit card on file would return his money to the reseller, not to him.
Please urge your NC Senator to support S849 and stop dishonest resellers from cheating fans, hurting artists, and damaging small businesses and nonprofits across the state.