Hawaii bans ticket scalping after Bruno Mars Fan uproar

Bruno Mars fans have been hit hard by ticket scalpers, with resale prices soaring to thousands of dollars. Now the state of Hawaii bans ticket scalping via new legislation that bans re-sale markups, stop bots and protect consumers.

Hawaii bans ticket scalping after Bruno Mars Fan uproar

by CHRIS CASTLE of Music Tech Policy

Look up “Not a Bot” in the dictionary….

Bruno Mars is a huge star everywhere but has exceptionally loyal fans in Hawaii. Unfortunately, this means he is a top target for bots and ticket resellers. At a 2018 concert at Honolulu Stadium, second row seats priced at $125 face were reportedly resold for $6,972. As usual, the artist had nothing to do with these resellers and the artist did not make the reseller’s margin. If that’s not a market failure, I don’t know what is.

That margin was driven by bots that are as close to resellers as one is to two and have been the subject of a lot of attention by lawmakers at the federal level and increasingly in the states. Bots have been illegal under federal law since 2016, but federal law enforcement authorities have done little to enforce that law to the great frustration of Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal who sponsored the legislation.

This leaves enforcement to states and Hawaii is no exception. Hawaii state senators Chris Lee (D)*,  Karl Rhoads (D)*,  Joy San Buenaventura (D)*,  and Lorraine Inouye (D),  have introduced legislation under Hawaii’s consumer protection authority that would limit resale prices to the face price of any ticket.

The bill language states:

The legislature finds that popular events held in the State attract secondary market profiteers, commonly known as scalpers.  Scalpers often utilize computer software to navigate a ticket-selling platform and its security measures in a fraction of the time as a human being to purchase multiple tickets and conduct multiple transactions simultaneously.  For example, in 2018, thousands of tickets for a concert held in the State by recording artist Bruno Mars ended up on third party websites at inflated prices.

Accordingly, the purpose of this Act is to eliminate the impact of scalpers on Hawaii residents by prohibiting tickets to be sold at a higher price than the original price charged by the primary venue ticket provider.

See how easy that was? Does it make me uneasy to have government setting prices? It does, but it’s about the only way I can see in the current environment to stop resellers like StubHub from blatantly ripping off fans by leveraging their confederates in the vast bot ecosystem. If the federal government is not going to prosecute these people under existing laws, then don’t be surprised if the states pass their own consumer protection legislation with a host of penalties. 

The Hawaii legislation is scheduled for a January 30 hearing before Hawaii’s Senate Transportation and Culture and the Arts Committee. Fingers crossed it gets voted out of the committee.

We should not be surprised. It’s gotten so bad, fans are not going to tolerate bot scalping and under well-trodden principles of subsidiarity, it’s only appropriate for states to take charge. To coin a phrase, “don’t believe me just watch.”