Deirdre Cummings
Legislative Director, MASSPIRG
617-747-4319
[email protected]
Consumer Advocates Urge Gov. Healey To Amend Eco Dev Bill to Protect Fans of Live Events
Media Contacts
Boston, MA. – Today, a group of consumer protection and fan advocacy organizations called on Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey to amend the Economic Development Bill, H. 5100 that passed last week. MASSPIRG, the National Consumers League, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, and Sports Fans Coalition, called on Governor Healey in a letter to strike sections which would codify anti-consumer event ticket sales practices and further entrench Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s monopoly on the live events industry in the Commonwealth. A copy of the letter is available here.
According to the letter, “Ticket transferability, a key consumer protection, is about more than just convenience; it gives consumers control of their ticket after they purchase it, empowering fans to comparison shop across different marketplaces where current ticket holders can resell at prices either above or below the original cost. Without the right to transferability, ticket sellers prevent ticket owners from reselling tickets through any site but their own.”
“When you buy concert, sports or other event tickets, you should be able to do whatever you want with them, including re-selling them or giving them to friends or family. Ticket sellers should have no right to prevent us from transferring them on our own terms,” said Deirdre Cummings, Legislative and Consumer Program Director for MASSPIRG. “Requiring event tickets to be transferable is both a key consumer protection and common sense. We urge Governor Healey to veto the language in the bill that allows ticketers to sell ‘non-transferable’ tickets and instead protect consumers by making all event tickets ‘transferable.’”
“Giving Live Nation-Ticketmaster permission to further monopolize live events in Massachusetts is not in the interest of the fans who power the industry,” said John Breyault, Vice President of Public Policy Telecommunications and Fraud of the National Consumers League. “We urge Gov. Healey to use the economic development bill to promote competition for live events in the Bay State, not restrict it.”
“We call on Governor Healey to amend H. 5100 to protect ticket transferability,” said Brian Hess, Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. “Massachusetts law should not codify the anticompetitive business model of a monopoly that the Commonwealth’s Attorney General is currently investigating. Transferability equals savings for Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins fans. With a stroke of a pen, Governor Healey can supercharge these savings by amending H. 5100 to allow fans to freely transfer their tickets.”
As the letter points out, Protect Ticket Rights analyzed nearly 200,000 tickets sold in Massachusetts in 2023 and found that fans saved $13.87 million when buying tickets to concerts, games, and other events on resale marketplaces when compared to the total price when those tickets were originally sold. The report by Protect Ticket Rights includes examples of deeply discounted tickets for events in Boston offered by ticketholders on resale marketplaces, including $6 tickets to the October Drive-By Truckers concerts when Ticketmaster was selling comparable tickets for $56.
Similarly, the Sports Fans Coalition found that fans across the country saved a collective $351 million between 2017 and 2024 by buying tickets to sporting events on secondary markets. In Massachusetts alone, fans saved over $21 million on sports tickets during this period. Those who bought sports tickets below face value saved an average of $30 per ticket—enough to cover the cost of a drink and a hot dog. The Sports Fans Coalition report details the following savings in Massachusetts:
- Bruins fans saved $5.9 million
- Celtics fans saved $6.5 million
- Red Sox fans saved $7.4 million
- Patriot fans saved $1.1 million
In addition to its anti-consumer impact, the letter notes that, if this language were to become law, it would conflict with the position Attorney General Andrea Campbell took in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit against LNE and its Ticketmaster subsidiary. According to the letter, “H. 5100’s ticketing provisions stand in stark opposition to Massachusetts Attorney General Campbell’s litigation against LNE. By endorsing SafeTix’s restrictive practices through this legislation, Massachusetts would be the first state to enact a policy that effectively blesses LNE’s anti-competitive practices. This would be a troubling precedent that would undermine General Campbell’s ongoing efforts to curb monopolistic behavior in the industry. If H. 5100 goes into effect as currently written, it will significantly impair the state’s ability to hold LNE accountable and will weaken the AG’s case by suggesting that Massachusetts has tacitly approved these monopolistic practices.” If H. 5100 is left unchanged, live event fans in Massachusetts will face limited resale options, fewer protections, and higher fees.
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