How a California Democrat named Buffy could be a slayer of corporate billionaires | Opinion

The service fee for that ticket to attend a Sacramento Kings game or a concert may comprise a modest fraction of the overall cost. Still, we’re forced to pay it simply because companies like Ticketmaster monopolize the tickets for the events we want to see.

To even call it a “service fee,” is an abuse of the words but it’s our reality.

Ticketmaster has managed to control an estimated 80 percent of the nation’s ticket-selling market for athletic and music events. And now a Bay Area legislator known for challenging the new titans of American industry is taking on Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation.

Opinion

Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, envisions a day when all ticket providers share the sales platform to sell entry to the same event, with the market rewarding the companies with the lowest fees.

Once again, California finds itself trying to address national problems the rest of the nation is ducking. Congress has held hearings. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating. Wicks wants to do something.

“I view it really like a fairness issue and a consumer protection issue,” said Wicks. She hopes to “strengthen the fan and artist relationship….And right now, that relationship is really controlled by Ticketmaster.”

Part of the Live Nation conglomerate based in Beverly Hills, Ticketmaster makes its fortune between the huge demand for popular events and a limited supply of tickets driving up prices, particularly in the secondary sales market. Ticketmaster admits it is big, but its size is not the reason for higher ticket prices. It’s business practices are the reason. If you don’t pay what they demand, even when the service fee is excessive and unfair, you don’t get a ticket to see the show.

Enter Wicks, whose Assembly Bill 2808 outlines what could be detailed legislation. She envisions a one-stop show for Californians to buy entertainment tickets online. Ticketmaster, StubHub, and all other qualifying providers would offer the same-priced ticket with each provider proposing its service fee to consumers, giving them a choice they don’t currently enjoy.

Computer systems can speak to one another if they share a common language, software known as application programming interface or API. Under AB 2808, Ticketmaster and every ticketing merchant would need to provide software to its sales system that “ enables any participating ticketing provider, as defined, to integrate with the ticket manifest to list and sell primary tickets or secondary tickets.” In theory, competition to sell tickets would lower those surcharges.

“I mean, we put a man on the moon,” Wicks said. “We can sell tickets in a safe way.”

The companies controlling the entertainment ticket market scoff at this and even say they are not to blame for high ticket prices - fan behavior is.

At a Feb. 13 informational hearing in the State Assembly, Ticketmaster Executive Vice President Dan Wall said that the ticket company profit on a typical concert “is on the order of 2% of the ticket price.”

That initial price of a ticket typically starts low, Wall said. “Artists always under-price their tickets,” he said.

Fans, in essence, have only themselves to blame for paying a much higher ticket on a resale market because they want to see a concert so badly. Then there are the fans who buy their tickets and sell them at higher prices instead of attending shows themselves.

Buyers using sophisticated software known as “bots” can buy tickets in bulk, despite Ticketmaster’s best efforts to stop them. “That means tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of fans are going to lose out on the opportunity to buy those tickets,” he said. In the secondary market, (Ticketmaster player here as well) with other players such as StubHub, the profits to the seller and ticket provider are “actually greater per ticket than what the band can make on the show.”

Ticketmaster is adept at analyzing the obvious: Fans themselves are driving up the prices of tickets by overpaying on the secondary market for tickets they want to use or selling their tickets on the secondary market at inflated prices. But Ticketmaster is profiting from these practices because they are a player in the secondary market as well. And they make tickets even more expensive with their fees.

They don’t make the case that a monopoly can reform monopoly behavior.

“California is known for taking some big swings,” Wicks said. Already challenging Google and Meta in separate legislation, Wicks carries one of the biggest bats in Sacramento.

We’re a country that tamed industrial monopolies more than a century ago, only to see new and far more complex corporate creatures emerge in this fast-changing high-era. When one company controls 80 percent of any market, particularly one this big, that is a national problem that requires a national solution. AB 2808 is an imperfect substitute for federal action, but it’s simply impossible to defend the status quo.