Proposed ticket legislation would shake up the market for music, sports and performing arts fans in Maryland - Baltimore Sun
Before it sold out, Hozier fans paid $40 via Ticketmaster to sit on the lawn for the singer’s Merriweather Post Pavilion concert in May. Now, latecomers who buy tickets on StubHub will pay nearly five times more for the same vantage point. In some extreme cases, tickets are being digitally hawked on resale sites for 10 or 20 times their face value — before the Columbia music venue even puts them on sale, said Audrey Fix Schaefer, the director of communications for I.M.P., which operates Merriweather Post Pavilion. “Pricing, it’s so far out of control,” Schaefer said. When it comes to the tickets available to customers, “even if they’re paying two times as much, or five times as much, they don’t have to, when they could buy them from us.” Not to mention the disappointment directed at Merriweather when a resale ticket doesn’t work, a common fate, Schaefer said. Now, Maryland’s ticketing landscape is poised for an overhaul. Proposed legislation banning the sale of “speculative ti...