Speaker 1: You've probably been through it. Tickets for a concert are
Speaker 1: going on sale online at ten am. You're waiting patiently
Speaker 1: in front of your computer at nine, and when the
Speaker 1: virtual door opens at ten, you click on get tickets,
Speaker 1: But there are no tickets left, except, of course, for
Speaker 1: exorbitant markups on resale sites. How does that happen? It's
Speaker 1: the ticket box, computer software that cuts the line, overrides
Speaker 1: the ticket seller's website, and purchases almost all the available
Speaker 1: tickets before mere humans can get to them. Hamilton's creator
Speaker 1: and star a Linn Manuel Miranda has been on something
Speaker 1: of a crusade to stop the bots. It's hard to
Speaker 1: get tickets to anything, but while you're typing in your
Speaker 1: capture code, that bot has already got the ticket you're
Speaker 1: trying to get. And it's just not fair. Now New
Speaker 1: York has a new law that makes it a crime
Speaker 1: to use ticket boats, with fines of up to FI
Speaker 1: dollars as well as a year in jail. But how
Speaker 1: much impact will this law have on those steep ticket resales?
Speaker 1: Joining us is Gerald Silverman, staff correspondent for Bloomberg b
Speaker 1: Na Gerald, the use of ticket bots was already subject
Speaker 1: to find in New York. So how much will this
Speaker 1: law make a difference. That's right. The law does three
Speaker 1: key things. It increases the current civil penalties for using bots.
Speaker 1: It also creates criminal penalties for using bots, and it
Speaker 1: makes a ticket reseller libel under the law. So, for example,
Speaker 1: a ticket reseller like StubHub would be liabel for criminal
Speaker 1: and civil penalties if it knowingly resell the tickets that
Speaker 1: were obtained through box. Well, how, speaking of Generald, speaking
Speaker 1: of the things like you know, StubHub and other resellers,
Speaker 1: you know, other than the speed and efficiency with which
Speaker 1: this happens, how is it really different these ticket bots
Speaker 1: than what these purportedly legal resellers are doing. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a number of different players in the ticket industry. There's
Speaker 1: ticket vendors like Ticketmaster, and then there's the brokers, and
Speaker 1: then there's the ticket resell platforms like StubHub. And I
Speaker 1: would want to emphasize that not all ticket brokers use bots.
Speaker 1: In fact, the National Association of Ticket Brokers supported the
Speaker 1: New York law and they oppose bots. So the laws
Speaker 1: really aimed at getting rid of bad actors. So to
Speaker 1: the you asked what the impact would be, So to
Speaker 1: the extent that bad actors are deterred by criminal penalties,
Speaker 1: and yes, I think the law will have an impact.
Speaker 1: The it's a class A misdemeanor, which means that that
Speaker 1: someone could face up to a year in jail or
Speaker 1: criminal penalties of up to a thousand dollars per violation.
Speaker 1: But you have to keep in mind two things. One
Speaker 1: is there's a lot of money at stake. It's a
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar industry, and the civil penalties right now are
Speaker 1: viewed by some people as simply the cost of doing business. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the Attorney General found that a single bot
Speaker 1: operator made one point four million dollars in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: and a large scale operator with multiple bots made forty
Speaker 1: two million dollars in two thousand thirteen. So there's there's
Speaker 1: big bucks at stake here. And the second thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind is that there are other factors at play.
Speaker 1: So the Attorney General, for example, found that half of
Speaker 1: all tickets are reserved are not available for the public,
Speaker 1: so the other half are withheld, made available to sponsors, promoters, agents,
Speaker 1: credit card holders, fan clubs, and season ticket holders. And
Speaker 1: the law would not address this issue. That's why you
Speaker 1: always see celebrities going to these plays. They don't have
Speaker 1: any problem getting tickets. Gerald, the law doesn't addressed scalpers
Speaker 1: or ticket sellers that are out of state or overseas.
Speaker 1: Will national legislation be needed, That's a good question. So
Speaker 1: there are about twelve states right now that have some
Speaker 1: kind of penalties for using bots. But I think where
Speaker 1: this law could be important is in building momentum for
Speaker 1: a federal bill. So there's a federal bill right now
Speaker 1: that passed the House and the past the Senate Commerce Committee.
Speaker 1: Whether it passes by the end of the year is
Speaker 1: uncertain at this point. Gerald, you mentioned that you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the companies that sell tickets, you know,
Speaker 1: the big companies that resell tickets, like Ticketmaster against or
Speaker 1: were for this law there against the bots. Why is that? Why?
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't they just want to have bots of their own,
Speaker 1: the ticket resellers. Well, actually so StubHub did support the
Speaker 1: law as well as Ticketmaster. And because I think this
Speaker 1: this law is aimed at the bad actors, and not
Speaker 1: all the ticket brokers are bad actors, and and some
Speaker 1: do it legitimately, so they want a level playing field.
Speaker 1: Just quickly drilled in about a minute, So how will
Speaker 1: they find these bad actors. Well, the the Attorney General,
Speaker 1: who has been very active on this, will be in
Speaker 1: charge of enforcing the law. And in fact the Attorney
Speaker 1: General did an investigation earlier this year which was really
Speaker 1: one of the prime influences on the law, and it
Speaker 1: was it was not just about the ticket bots, but
Speaker 1: it was also about the markup in prices. So the
Speaker 1: average markup and the resale market now is about and
Speaker 1: some can go as high as a thousand percent. Well,
Speaker 1: I know from looking for those Adele tickets that they
Speaker 1: are incredibly exorbited. Thanks so much, Gerald Silverman's staff correspondent
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg b NA. I guess, Michael, we will find
Speaker 1: out in the future whether we can get those tickets