Washingtonians deserve a ticketing system that is transparent, fair and consumer friendly. We came here for college and chose to stay after graduation because of the affordable concerts and cultural events the District offers. Unfortunately, the RESALE Act being considered by the City Council consolidates power in the hands of the most dominant ticketing company, limiting choice and making live events less accessible for residents.
The market is the heart of the problem. Just one company controls 70 percent of the primary ticketing market, enabling unparalleled influence over ticket pricing and distribution. Through exclusive contracts, it controls artist management relationships, concert promotion and booking, venue operations, support services, and data that shape tour routing and pricing decisions.
That dominance has drawn federal scrutiny: the Federal Trade Commission recently alleged that the monopoly misleads consumers by concealing mandatory fees, sometimes tacking on up to 44 percent of a ticket’s face value price. While these monopolistic practices remain under investigation, this law would add fuel to the fire and tie fans’ hands, restricting our freedom to purchase tickets as we choose.
Comprehensive reform requires targeting the right aspect of the market. Instead of addressing the real source of high prices — the primary market’s excessive, often deceptive and dynamic fees — the RESALE Act caps resale prices at face value plus 10 percent. Supporters tout price caps as “consumer-friendly,” but evidence shows that artificially low caps create shortages and drive buyers to unregulated corners of the internet, increasing the risk of being scammed. In practice, this bill will send fans to less transparent and less safe marketplaces while doing little to rein in the fees that forced us there in the first place.
The bill also ignores one of the primary market’s most frustrating practices: holding back large portions of tickets for presales, exclusive offers or preferred partners, creating an illusion of scarcity to artificially increase demand. Without requiring disclosure of how many tickets are actually available to the public or “all-in pricing” that shows the true cost upfront, D.C. fans will remain stuck navigating a system designed to keep us guessing.
If the council’s goal is fairness, this is the wrong direction.
A fair market is, by definition, a competitive one. In D.C., many venues operate under exclusive ticketing contracts, leaving them, artists, and fans at the whim of a single entity. When one company controls all that, it gains outsized power over which artists perform in D.C., how tickets are priced, and how much local businesses ultimately earn. That level of control puts the District’s cultural and economic vitality at risk.
The bill also undermines an obvious principle: If you buy a ticket, it should belong to you. We should be free to give it to a friend, resell it if our plans change, or donate it. But the RESALE Act allows ticket sellers to restrict transfers, provided they disclose the restriction before purchase. Anyone who has ever bought tickets to a show knows that fine print doesn’t help when your plans change or you have to leave town for a last-minute work trip. A ticket you can’t use and can’t transfer is money lost. D.C. should safeguard transferability, not weaken it.
However, there is one policy the bill gets right: cracking down on fully automated ticket-buying bots. Malicious software snaps up tickets faster than humans can, leaving everyday fans at a disadvantage. This provision is sensible, but it is buried inside a Trojan Horse bill that otherwise harms consumers.
Finally, the RESALE Act places an onus on small, independent ticket resellers, who are the platforms we turn to when we’re shut out of events by restrictive primary market practices. Last year, Washingtonians were priced out of Beyoncé’s highly anticipated Cowboy Carter Tour due to dynamic pricing during pre-sale — until lower prices, reflective of true demand rather than just the number of site visitors at any given time, enabled fans to buy tickets at reasonable prices on resale platforms. It’s hard to claim fairness while exempting the largest and most powerful players from rules everyone else must follow.
D.C. lawmakers have a real opportunity to enact a bill that adds transparency to pricing and inventory, encourages healthy competition, and ensures fans’ basic right to tickets they’ve bought with their own money. That means strengthening transferability, requiring primary sellers to disclose the true cost and availability of tickets, and regulating the entire market — not just independent resellers who lack the resources and well-connected lobbyists of national monopolies.
The excitement of live D.C. events shouldn’t be reserved for those who can navigate a confusing maze of fees and restrictions. Washingtonians deserve better. The council should revise the RESALE Act to put fans first, not monopolies.
