Consumer Protection

A bill moving forward at the Minnesota Legislature would cap the resale price of concert tickets at no more than 15% above the original face value after fees and force platforms like SeatGeek and StubHub to disclose the original ticket price. The proposal, carried by Rep. Erin Koegel (DFL–Spring Lake Park), targets bots and bulk resellers that snap up tickets and then sharply mark them up, but it would not apply to tickets for sports events or Broadway-style performances. A StubHub representative warned lawmakers that primary sellers like Ticketmaster and Live Nation routinely hold back roughly half of tickets and create artificial scarcity, driving up prices before the resale market ever sees them. The bill advanced out of committee on Wednesday with some members questioning how far the state can go without also tackling primary-market practices, especially given Minnesota’s separate antitrust suit against Ticketmaster/Live Nation and ongoing federal action that so far has delivered no direct compensation to consumers. For Twin Cities concertgoers shut out of big shows or gouged on the secondary market, the measure would put a hard ceiling on resale prices while leaving the underlying monopoly fight with Ticketmaster largely unresolved.