NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman last week announced that his office had settled with six ticket brokers that, collectively, illegally resold hundreds of thousands of tickets in New York State since 2011, including on popular ticket resale platforms like StubHub and Vivid Seats.
The companies – TicketToad.com, Inc. of New Jersey, Charm City Entertainment LLC of Florida, Just In Time Tickets, Inc. of New York, A2Z Tix LLC of New York, Flying Falco Entertainment, Inc. (d/b/a Avery Tickets) of California, and All Events Utah, LLC of Utah – each illegally sold tickets to events in New York over the last several years without first obtaining the required license.
TicketToad, A2Z, Just In Time, Flying Falco Entertainment and All Events Utah also violated New York’s ticket laws by using illegal software, AKA ticketing bots, to purchase large numbers of tickets from primary websites and then resold them at a large profit, the AG's office said.
The settles included fines, penalties and disgorged profits that combined, totalled $2,760,000 and required that the companies maintain proper reseller licenses, and abstain from using bots in the future.
“Our office has zero tolerance for ticket resellers that use illegal bots to scoop up large numbers of tickets for popular events before consumers can obtain them, and then resell those tickets to those very same consumers at a large markup,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “New Yorkers deserve a fairer ticket marketplace. Our office will continue to enforce New York’s ticket laws by investigating ticket brokers who are breaking our laws, and making them pay for their illegal acts.”
The settlements come as a part of a larger probe by the AG's office into ticketing practices. On May 3rd, the AG's office sent a letter to ticket reasle sites StubHub, Vivid Seats, Ticketmaster and TicketNetwork soliciting their assistance in improving transparency in the secondary marketplace.
The letter recommended the following three measures, suggesting their implementation could reduce exposure to future law enforcement action for the ticket marketplaces.
1. Verify that professional ticket resellers are properly licensed by requiring that high volume resellers reselling tickets to events in New York through resale platforms provide a New York ticket reseller license number.
2. Facilitate professional ticket resellers’ compliance with New York disclosure laws, for example by enabling resellers to provide face value information when listing a ticket to an event in New York for sale and a scanned copy of their license, and making that
information available to consumers.
3. Discourage speculative ticket sales by actively identifying ticket resellers that routinely list tickets for sale that they do not have the right to sell and taking action against those resellers. – Staff Writers
