NATB Denounces Ticketmaster’s Required Use of Paperless Tickets

NATB Denounces Ticketmaster’s Required Use of Paperless Tickets

WASHINGTON, DC: The National Association of Ticket Brokers (NATB), the non-profit trade association dedicated to protecting consumers and the secondary ticket market, today denounced Ticketmaster’s policy requiring use of paperless tickets, calling it an unnecessarily cumbersome and anti-competitive practice that should cause alarm to those reviewing the potential Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger. In recent days, numerous NATB members have received reports of customers who are extremely dissatisfied with Ticketmaster for unnecessarily forcing the use of paperless tickets to access popular events.

“It’s absurd that Ticketmaster demands more private information for a 13 year old to attend a Miley Cyrus concert than the federal government requires to board an airplane,” said NATB spokesman and counsel, Gary Adler. “As Ticketmaster and Live Nation push forward with their potential merger, it’s incumbent upon the fans and the industry to shine a light on these anti-competitive practices that will create a monopoly on the ticketing market and strip fans of their right to access tickets.”

Accounts from reported events range from scanner errors and parents forced to wait in long lines to access tickets for their children, to cases where fans have missed shows with no refund because of inability to arrive on site or provide multiple forms of identification to gain entry into the system. In order to have the option to receive tickets that may be transferable, fans are forced to pay for marked-up package prices or fees, stripping them of their right to give tickets to whoever they choose.

“Fans have the right to receive tangible and transferable tickets in advance of an event, and the right to give, gift, sell, or use them as they wish,” said Adler. “Ticketmaster is trampling all over this right in yet another vain effort to maximize profits while stifling any competition or choice in the market. They’ve finally gone too far, and fans are calling them out on it.”

Earlier this year, U.S. Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) addressed the paperless ticket issue in a letter to the Department of Justice, citing that the system unfairly takes away the right to transfer tickets, creating a stranglehold that would essentially eliminate any type of competition in the secondary ticketing market.

Under the current paperless ticketing system, any fan who wishes to sell or gift their ticket, either for profit or convenience, is required to use Ticketmaster’s own service – TicketExchange – thereby protecting the right to resell only through their own company’s site and enabling them to charge more in convenience fees. By allowing the primary ticket seller to also serve as the secondary seller, the consumer has no choice in how to purchase tickets, and competition for prices is eliminated.

For more information on NATB and consumer protection efforts, please visit www.NATB.org.

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About the National Association of Ticket Brokers (NATB)

The National Association of Ticket Brokers (NATB) was formed in 1994 by a group of leading ticket brokers involved in the sale of sports, concerts and theater admission tickets, for the purpose of establishing an industry-wide standard of conduct and to create ethical rules and procedures to educate the public concerning ticket-brokering services and to serve the primary goal of the NATB — promoting consumer protection. All members of the NATB are dedicated to the principle of assuring the public that dealings with NATB members are conducted with integrity, reliability and convenience. To this end, the NATB has created procedures that permit the public to report improper and unethical conduct by ticket brokers, and to disseminate consumer protection warnings and guidelines. Through self-governance, the NATB has provided many enhanced protections for ticket-buying consumers. The NATB has worked with law enforcement agencies across the country, state and federal legislators and the NFL and other professional sports leagues and teams, to accomplish these goals, and has been vital in the NFL’s fight against counterfeit and stolen tickets.

More information about the NATB is available at www.NATB.org.

About NATB’s Ticket MarketPlace

NATB offers its “Ticket MarketPlace” site as a resource for the public to purchase tickets directly from a reliable source. All tickets available on this site are for sale only by NATB Member Brokers, assuring the consumer that the tickets being purchased are from a source that provides consumer protection, confidence, and a written guarantee as provided by the NATB’s strict Code of Ethics.

To access the NATB Ticket Marketplace, please visit www.NATB.com.