Senate Reverses Stand, Passes Bill to Crack Down on Ticket Scalping

Caught in a cross-fire between promoters of rock concerts and independent agents who resell tickets at super-inflated prices, the Senate reversed itself Friday and narrowly approved a heavily lobbied bill to put scalpers in jail or out of business.

The bill, supported by rock music impresario Bill Graham, was defeated last week, with 12 votes for and 15 against. But Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) returned it for a second try and prevailed on a 21-15 vote, the bare majority required to send it to the Assembly, where it faces an uncertain outcome.

The proposal, which could affect millions of dollars in the resale of tickets for concerts and major sporting events, pits rock concert promoters and their regular ticket outlets against independent ticket brokers who pay people to buy blocks of tickets in advance and resell them at higher prices.

It is a misdemeanor to resell tickets--called scalping--at the site of an entertainment event. But the law usually is not enforced and ticket brokers bypass it anyway by doing business away from the site, Lockyer said.

Under the bill, violators could be sent to jail for six months and fined $1,000 for reselling 20 or fewer tickets at prices above the face value. Sales of more than 20 tickets would be punishable by a $5,000 fine and a year in jail.

In an emotional speech, Lockyer told the Senate that “honest-to-God, everyday consumers are getting ripped off by leeches and parasites whose only skill in life is to hire the homeless or college students and send them to stand in line, scrounge the tickets, jump the price and resell them.”

Lockyer termed his bill a consumer protection plan. But it was criticized by a pair of philosophical opposites, conservative Sen. Frank Hill (R-Whittier) and liberal Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles). They denounced it as an unnecessary governmental intrusion in a big-stakes financial fight between concert promoters and independent brokers.

With huge sums of money riding on the outcome of the bill, both the promoters and the independent ticket brokers have retained platoons of some of the capital’s most influential and costly lobbyists.

Roberti complained that the measure would apply to resold tickets for a wide variety of entertainment events, including symphony concerts and championship athletic events such as the Super Bowl.

“Why in the world should the problems of the rock concerts be visited on all of the rest of us?” Roberti asked.

Hill said independent ticket resellers perform a valuable service by eliminating the need for consumers to queue up in long lines to buy tickets. “The best way to protect the consumer is to give him more choices in the marketplace, not less,” he said.

Hill also criticized the practice of entertainment promoters who levy stiff “service charges” on tickets, which he said can be as much as 55% above the price of the ticket. He suggested that restrictions be imposed on promoter service charges, a proposal that touched off a strong response from Lockyer.

“I say to these opponents who want to regulate service charges, go write your own damned bill. This is my bill. It’s a good consumer protection bill and it makes sense,” Lockyer bellowed.

In addition to Graham, the bill was backed by such big-name distributors as BASS/Ticketmaster and by Spectacor Management Group, the San Francisco Giants, Capitol Records and Electra/Asylum Records. It was opposed by various independent ticket agents and their trade organization, the California Assn. of Ticket Agencies.