Hozier set his ticket price at $99 for his May 17 show at Merriweather Post Pavilion, but scalpers have skyrocketed the ticket price to more than $5,000. Tickets for Mitski’s Sept. 1 concert at the Columbia, Maryland venue were set at $125, but scalpers are reselling them for more than $12,000.
Scalping is nothing new to the concert industry, but Merriweather is trying to eliminate it with new legislation in Maryland.
The practice, which has become more prevalent over the last eight years, occurs when scalpers buy tickets for an event and resell them for a much higher figure than face value. Scalpers will oftentimes use bots to automatically buy tickets, which simplifies their purchase process.
“When we put tickets on sale, our customers don’t stand a chance about getting a ticket because [scalpers] have crowded them out,” said Audrey Fix Schaefer, the director of communications at Merriweather.
Ticketing sites like SeatGeek and Vivid Seats have even offered $125 parking passes at Merriweather, but there’s a catch: Merriweather has free parking.
Fix Schaefer said the venue had been asking around the state house for someone to sponsor anti-scalping legislation. State Sen. Dawn Gile took up sponsorship of the bill introduced in late January.
One main part of the bill is a section that bans speculative tickets. Merriweather releases show dates on Wednesdays but starts selling tickets on Friday. However, some ticketing websites will sell “speculative tickets” before Friday, even though they don’t have any tickets.
Another part of the bill limits resale prices to the original cost of the ticket. This essentially eliminates the incentive for scalpers to act as a third party because they won’t be able to profit from the resale.
The bill also includes a 10% limit for how much resale sites can charge in fees. For a $120 ticket, the maximum amount a company like SeatGeek or Vivid Seats can charge in fees is $12.
The bill has already garnered support from concertgoers in Maryland who don’t want to continue paying high prices due to scalping. Fix Schaefer said when the bill was first introduced, Merriweather emailed its customers letting them know what was happening.
The email encouraged people to reach out to legislators and rally support.
“Within 24 hours, 7,000 emails were sent to state legislators,” Fix Schaefer said. “I mean, that’s a lot. But then I thought, ‘You know, it makes perfect sense.’ These are the people who love to go to concerts and are frustrated by getting pushed out by the scalpers or taken advantage of financially by the scalpers, and they don’t want that.”
The bills, SB 539 and HB 701, have also garnered support from larger organizations in the entertainment industry. Twenty-one organizations sent a joint letter to the Maryland House of Delegates Economic Matters Committee. The signed-on organizations include SAG-AFTRA, The National Independent Venue Association, the Recording Academy, and others.
“HB701 will codify consumer protections by 1) bringing transparency to ticket prices, 2) making it illegal for ticket resellers to gouge Maryland consumers, 3) banning the sale of “speculative” tickets, which are fake and 4) ensuring that fans who can’t make an event are able to sell their tickets to other fans,” the letter read. “HB701, when properly enforced, will end toxic, predatory practices that fleece music fans.”
Others, like musician and record producer Kevin Erickson, gave testimony. He mentioned the Taylor Swift ticket sales fiasco as a reminder to musicians of the dysfunctionality of the ticketing system. In 2022, tickets to Swift’s concerts were being resold for as much as $28,000.
“The problems are complex, but most are not inevitable; rather they are a product of public policy choices,” Erickson said in his testimony. “We believe that better choices at the state and federal level can create better outcomes, and HB 701 represents a massive step forward.”
Fix Schaefer said Baltimore music venue Rams Head Live went to speak about the bill, and she is sure other venues feel strongly about the legislation, too.
Spearheading the effort to pass the bill means a lot to Fix Schaefer. She has seen too many times when people have shown up at Merriweather’s box office on the night of a show with a fake ticket that they thought was real.
“The look of disappointment, anger, confusion, rage that occurs on their face when they realize that they’ve been duped,” she said. “And there’s nothing that we can do about it because we didn’t sell them that bad ticket.”
The bill would put ticket sales more under the control of concert venues and less in the hands of third-party sites.
Fix Schaefer knows lobbyists for ticket resale sites will try to fight the bill. However, she wants legislators to look at the 7,000 emails that came in within a day of Merriweather’s email.
“I am really hopeful that legislators listen to their constituents, not the lobbyists,” she said.
Great article. We need to support his bill and let Maryland take the lead, so all states will do the same. I have been going to concerts since the 80’s in Maryland, and it’s the worst ever with ticket scalpers! No matter if it’s a concert or a sporting event, what is happening with these outrageous make ups is insane. We have to stop this once and for all!