Concerts are a blast and often offer once in a lifetime experiences to see your favorite artists perform live. Getting tickets to concerts can be quite tricky, though. With exclusive online purchasing, tickets can sell out within minutes and be bought by “bots” or an advanced program, with the goal of buying as many tickets as possible from the original vendor and reselling them for a much higher price.
Issues like this have reached the concern of many Arizonans, including our governor, Katie Hobbs. As of April 2024, Hobbs has signed the Arizona House Bill 2040 into law which prohibits individuals using automated software programs from purchasing excessive amounts of tickets or avoiding waiting periods or presale codes designed to control the volume of online ticket sales.
This comes after the massive upset of the Taylor Swift “Eras Tour” in which the primary vendor of all tickets for Swift’s highly-coveted show, known as Ticketmaster, had a presale codes that didn’t work, repeated website crashes, and tickets reappearing quickly for resale for often upwards of 3 to 7 times more than what they were originally listed for.
Swifties and concert lovers of Arizona should be elated to hear that those who break this law may be processed by the Attorney General and face a civil lawsuit with penalties of $10,000 per incident, up to $100,000. Now some fans may be worried that they have broken the law by using multiple IP or email addresses to purchase more than the allotted amount of tickets, but they can be relieved to know that the bill only specifies consequences for those who use an automated program to obtain more tickets.
That leaves only those who trampled the purchasing system enough to disrupt normal fans to face legal consequences. Enjoy your concerts and hopefully the less stressful buying process thanks to HB 2040.
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