Bill calling for added protections for online ticket buyers advances in House

Online ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour were such a disaster for consumers that Ticketmaster executives were grilled by U.S. senators on why thousands of “Swifties” waited online for hours before finally getting a chance to buy tickets — only to lose them when the site crashed.

Rep. Kelly Moller (DFL-Shoreview) was one of those.

She told the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee Tuesday those frustrations moved her to sponsor HF1989.

The bill would regulate how online ticket sellers, bulk ticket buyers and resellers operate aiming to give additional consumer protections to individual ticket buyers in the state.

“Whether you’re a Taylor Swift fan or not … regardless of what kinds of tickets you’re trying to get, you as a consumer and all Minnesota consumers deserve transparency in that process and fairness in that process,” Moller said.

The committee approved the bill, as amended, and sent it to the House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee.

It focuses on more than just the type of frustration Swifties experienced during the “Ticketmaster meltdown” of 2022, Moller said, noting that the entire online ticket buying and selling business needs much stronger regulation.

She said the bill would mandate “all-in pricing” to ensure ticket buyers know the total cost of a ticket up front and would not be hit with a final screen just as they are paying showing “enormous fees that are tacked on to the price of the ticket.”

Bulk ticket buyers/resellers would be prohibited from circumventing security processes to purchase tickets on the Internet or disguise their identity for the purpose of purchasing more than the maximum number of tickets allowed per person.

If a reseller used a bot or other technology to buy more tickets than allowed, the Department of Commerce would have the power to demand the reseller disclose how it was able to accomplish the deception. The department could then share that information with the state attorney general’s office for possible prosecution.

The bill would also:

• prohibit speculative pricing;
• ban deceptive advertising; and
• require an online ticket marketplace to disclose on its website that it is a ticket reseller.