NIVA Urges Action On Fans First Act As Spec Oasis Tickets Flood Market

BRITAIN MUSIC OASIS TRIBUTE
A photograph taken on September 2, 2024 shows a mural created by artist Scott Wilcock aka Snow Graffiti, depicting Liam Gallagher (L) and Noel Gallagher (R) members of the British rock band Oasis, and painted outside the pub Whitefield, near Heaton Park, in Manchester, northern England. Oasis, which was integral to the 1990s Britpop scene but split in 2009, announced on August 27, 2024 it will reunite next year for a worldwide tour, starting with 17 concerts in the UK and Ireland. The band are set to play five of their concerts at Manchester’s Heaton Park – one of Europe’s largest urban open spaces. (Photo by PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

More than 9,000 tickets for Oasis’s North American tour are available on Stubhub and Vivid Seats. There’s only one problem: tickets for those shows aren’t on sale yet.

The National Independent Venue Association says it’s yet another reason the U.S. Senate should move forward with the Fans First Act, a ticketing reform package that, among other things, would ban the selling of speculative tickets.

In a letter to Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate’s commerce committee, NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker said conservative estimates found 4,534 speculative tickets for sale on StubHub for three Oasis U.S. shows and another 3,450 on Vivid Seats.

“We are sharing examples of speculative and fake tickets from the Oasis shows with Congress because these are among the highest-profile sales that get the public’s and Congress’ attention,” Parker wrote. “The scourge of fake tickets for these shows and so many other lower profile shows deceives consumers and may even lead them to buy flights, hotels, dinners, and more that they can’t recover if they don’t receive the ticket they have purchased or if the ticket they receive does not work.

“The prices for these fake tickets are likely exceedingly higher than the face value of the tickets. We can’t determine the exact markup on the fake tickets given that there are no tickets available for the public to buy, let alone see the price. These price gouged tickets will leave fans with less money to spend on other shows and less money for the food, drink, and merchandise that generate critical revenue for the local communities where these shows happen.”

NIVA is asking Cantwell and Cruz to call a commerce committee hearing on predatory ticket practices, including the sale of speculative tickets, upon Congress’s return from recess in November. It also urges lawmakers to advance the Fans First Act as part of a comprehensive year-end legislative package to reform ticketing practices. 

While the House of Representatives passed the TICKET Act in May, NIVA and the Fix the Tix coalition are advocating for the similar, but stronger Fans First Act to be advanced during the lame-duck session, which was introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in December.

In addition to a wholesale ban on speculative tickets, Fans First requires all-in pricing from the beginning of the ticket sale price, disclosure if the ticket is being resold and full refunds for canceled events. It strengthens 2016’s BOTS Act, which has been criticized as difficult to enforce; the FTC has only brought a single prosecution under the bot-fighting bill in seven years. It also bars ticket resellers from using any intellectual property — beyond just the name — of artists, venues or primary ticketing sites to sell tickets; this sort of digital flimflam has proven persistent, fooling even the professionally incredulous. It would also fund a study on the ticketing industry from the Government Accountability Office, the first of its kind.