ALBANY NY (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — With New ork's ticket resale law undergoing debate in the state's legislature, TicketsNow, Live Nation's secondary ticketing service has yanked all tickets listed for New York events from its website.
According to TicketNews, Live Nation has been calling some of its broker clients to inform them of the decision. New York represents a major market for ticketing and affected events include Broadway shows, concerts and major sporting events for teams such as the New York Yankees.
The debate centers around a 3-year legislative experiment first passed in 2007, which lifted the state's restrictions on ticket resale. The 2007 legislation expired on May 15th and although several bills to extend the relaxed regulations have been making the rounds in Albany, debate around number of key sticking points have prevented the legislature from moving forward on any of them.
According to the New York Times, the most significant hurdle to new legislation has been paperless tickets, a technology favored by Ticketmaster, a division of Live Nation. Paperless tickets, which require ticket purchasers to verify their identity at the venue's box office make resale virtually impossible, unless it is done through Ticketmaster's own exchange system.
No forward moment on the Legislation is expected until at least May 24th, when the legislation is next scheduled to convene. In the meantime, secondary ticketing in New York is largely on hold.
"The legislature needs to approve the bill passed by the Assembly and supported by Gov. [David] Paterson. The delay in doing so is costing New York residents jobs and investment into call centers in the state," Don Vaccaro, founder and CEO of TicketNetwork told TicketNews "There are multiple investment and finance deals that have been shelved over the last few days because of the legislature's inaction, the investments may never come back to NYC." – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
