NY state investigating National Football League ticket price floors

Two ticket brokers that were illegally operating without a ticket reseller license reached settlements with the state and will pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines, Schneiderman’s office said.

A report released Thursday by Schneiderman suggests that many NFL teams encourage or require ticket holders to use the NFL Ticket Exchange, which prohibits sellers from cutting the price below face value. In 2013, another automated purchaser obtained 520 tickets to a Beyoncé concert at the Barclays Center in 2013 in three minutes. Lawmakers believed the move toward online sales would lead to a freer market and a level playing field for purchasers.

Schneiderman pointed out ticket brokers and resellers are required to be licensed in NY, and many are not.

Any New Yorker who has furiously tapped keys on a computer or cellphone hoping to pick up a hot ticket to see Mets Hall of Famer Mike Piazza’s number retired or concerts by Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen understands that the game is rigged.

The report highlights practices that are obviously no secret in the industry such as holds and presales that end up reducing tickets available for the general public. Their CEO, Don Vaccaro, continued, “Like TicketNetwork, the Attorney General supports fair pricing and keeping general public access to games affordable, and we will happily continue to work with his office to ensure customers are treated fairly”. Attorney General Schneiderman (D) says that’s because people, or groups, run “bots”- programs built to buy up mass quantities of tickets in a short amount of time. At Justin Bieber’s MSG show in 2012, nearly 30 percent of tickets were held back for industry insiders.

“When local music lovers have to spend so much on one concert, it leaves that much less money to spend on local music, theater, and entertainment – and that can hurt our local cultural economy” said Tod A. Kniazuk, Executive Director of Arts Services Initiative of Western New York.

While that may be the case, one argument from the NFL’s side says fans who are looking to buy and sell tickets frequently have other options and can explore them if they do not want to worry about the price floors on Ticketmaster. The report also shows that bots have been able to buy more than 90 percent of the best seats to any given show. Now in NY, it is illegal for companies like Ticketmaster to employ paperless ticketing through mobile technology to prevent scalpers from accessing tickets. “With the good has also come the bad and the ticket bots are a very real problem for both producers and consumers”, said Donny Kutzbach of Funtime Presents/Town Ballroom.