Virginia Rep Fights Ticketmaster Policy

A member of the Virginia House of Delegates has a bone to pick with Ticketmaster regarding concert tickets he wasn’t allowed to resell on his own.

AP Photo / The Canadian Press Images / Ottawa Bluesfest – Iron Maiden
RBC Bluesfest, Lebreton Flats Park, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Del. David B. Albo paid about $400 for two tickets to see Iron Maiden before he realized that the concert conflicted with a family vacation. That’s when he discovered he couldn’t resell, or even give away, those tickets because they were restricted to the ticketholder presenting a photo ID or the credit card used to buy the ducats at the door. He could only resell them through Ticketmaster channels, according to the Washington Post.

That definitely didn’t sit well with Albo.

“You think I’m going to give one of my friends my credit card? No,” he said. “That concert would cost me another $200 in beer. So I had to eat it.”

Albo introduced to the House of Delegates his Ticket Resale Rights Act Jan. 27. The bill would prevent ticket-sellers from restricting resale options. The bill would also make it illegal for venue staff to deny entry to patrons who bought tickets on the secondary market.

The House is expected to vote on the bill Jan. 30.

A Ticketmaster spokeswoman told the Post via email, “This scalper-friendly legislation is harmful to every sports and music fan in the Commonwealth, and the bill should be rejected just as it has been in other states across the country.”

Tray Adams, a Live Nation lobbyist, added that resell restrictions are usually placed on a small portion of tickets, such as 1,500 of the best seats in a 20,000-capacity venue, to prevent scalpers from buying those seats in bulk. 

“We do think credit-card entry is an effective tool to deal with scalpers,” he said. “Last year we stopped 15 billion – with a b– computerized scalping attempts,” the paper said.