Just so we’re clear, you won’t see political-themed posts here unless they somehow relate to good news about music. This is a music blog, after all.
And this post is about music. President Obama yesterday signed into law the Better Online Ticket Sales Act (the BOTS Act), which makes it illegal for secondary ticket sales markets (i.e., StubHub, Live Nation) to use robot programs to snatch up massive amounts of tickets for shows and then resell them to fans at ludicrous rates. It’s also now illegal for secondary ticket sellers to not stop “bot” programs they have in place or claim ignorance of “bot” programs being used by their company when evidence shows otherwise.
This is great news for those of us who enjoy live music or theatre. The stories of bands like Radiohead seeing tickets to their shows going to scalpers rather than fans are commonplace by now. Lin Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame has decried such ticket scalping methods as “killing Broadway.”
I don’t know when this law will start being enforced, but it should change the ticket buying game in time for the 2017 music festival and MLB seasons, let alone the remainder of this year’s NFL, NHL, and NBA seasons next year. Granted, many resellers will risk or gladly pay the fine as a simple cost of business since they’re making millions off inflated ticket prices, but some will think twice.
We’ll see you at more concerts next year!
Keep your mind open.
