As Live Nation- Ticketmaster Monopoly Ruling Clears Path for Breakup, California Bill Targeting Ticket Resale Abuse Advances

Assemblymember Haney's AB 1720, the California Fans First Act, restores fairness to the concert and live event ticket market and supports live music venues and touring artists by capping out-of-control ticket resale prices to 10% above face value.

• Annie Keys
• [email protected]

SACRAMENTO, CA - As a landmark antitrust ruling finds that Live Nation illegally monopolized the ticketing market - clearing the way for a potential breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster - California is advancing legislation to tackle a different, but equally harmful problem: price gouging in the ticket resale market.

Today, AB 1720, the California Fans First Act authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), passed the Assembly Committee on Privacy & Consumer Protection with a vote of 9-4, advancing efforts to curb excessive ticket resale prices and protect fans, artists, and independent venues.

"For too long, one company's monopoly has distorted the ticketing market, and now a court has made clear that era is coming to an end," said Haney, who chairs the Committee on Downtown Recovery. "But breaking up Live Nation-Ticketmaster is only half the fight. Without reforming the resale market, scalpers and bots will keep exploiting fans no matter who sells the tickets or holds the events. AB 1720 ensures that as competition is restored, the benefits actually reach fans, not middle men looking to drive up prices and cash in."

The antitrust decision marks a major step toward restoring competition in the primary ticketing market. But as lawmakers concluded in a 2024 legislative hearing on ticketing, breaking up Live Nation's monopoly and reforming the secondary market are separate challenges, and both must be addressed to fully protect consumers.

AB 1720 complements ongoing antitrust enforcement by closing a key loophole: unchecked speculation in the resale market. The bill caps resale prices for concert and live event tickets at no more than 10 percent above face value, including fees, targeting large-scale profiteering while preserving reasonable fan-to-fan resale.

Ticket brokers and automated bots have come to dominate the secondary market, driving prices far beyond face value. Fans often pay more than double the original price, with some tickets resold for several times their initial cost. At Weekend 1 of Coachella this year, $549 general admission passes surged to as much as $3,000 on resale platforms, with markups exceeding 300 percent even when artists set prices to improve access. Coachella is not an event affiliated at all with Live Nation Ticketmaster, but nonetheless saw ticket prices skyrocket due to the influence of scalpers and speculators.

"This week's ruling confirms what fans have known for years - the system has been rigged against them. But breaking up a monopoly won't mean affordable tickets for fans if we still allow scalpers and bots to turn concerts into a speculative bidding war. AB 1720 makes it clear: tickets are for fans, not for profiteers trying to flip them for 200 or 300 percent markups," said Haney.

The bill has drawn strong support from independent venues, nonprofit stages, and touring artists, who say unchecked resale practices are pricing out fans and undermining the sustainability of live music.

Even as the Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopoly faces potential breakup, action on the resale market is essential to ensure fans actually benefit from a more competitive system. Without reform, bad actors could continue exploiting fans regardless of who controls primary ticketing.

AB 1720 will next be heard in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

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