Passaic Today

Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), the longtime leader in Congress seeking regulation of the broken live events ticket market, today praised Colorado Democratic Governor Jared Polis for vetoing the final version of Senate Bill 23-060 that would not protect consumers from a duopoly of consolidated power in the ticketing marketplace.

“With his veto, Governor Polis has shown tremendous leadership and courage standing up for live event goers in Colorado,” said Congressman Pascrell. “My former House colleague and baseball teammate has been a stalwart advocate for the consumer. As I reminded the Governor when we spoke last month, I appreciated how was part of our group trying to convince the Obama Administration to stop the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger back in 2009, a deal that has made a bad situation even worse for fans.

Pascrell continued: “As I’ve championed in my BOSS and SWIFT ACT to bring federal regulation to the market, All-In-Pricing and holdback disclosure is important to bring daylight and transparency for consumers to make better purchasing decisions. We also cannot allow policies that permit deceptive sales, tolerate illegal bot usage, and restrict transferability for consumers. I hope what has happened in Colorado can help us jumpstart real consumer focused reforms to change this broken marketplace at the state and federal levels.”

On May 25, 2023, Congressmen Pascrell and Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ-06), the Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, reintroduced the BOSS and SWIFT Act, legislation to provide needed transparency and regulation to the badly corrupted live events ticket marketplace. The legislation is named in honor of New Jersey hero Bruce Springsteen and fans of Taylor Swift who were blocked when trying to buy concert passes during the recent ticketing fiasco. The Pascrell plan addresses issues including hidden fees, on-sale transparency, buyer protections, speculative tickets, and deceptive white label websites.

Pascrell has been a leader in Congress calling for regulation of the opaque live events ticket market. Pascrell was an early critic of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, and repeatedly urged the Obama administration to reject it, warning that the union would crush competition and harm consumers. Pascrell led 50 Members of Congress, including then Representative Jared Polis, in a letter to the Department of Justice in 2009 expressing that the merger should be viewed with great skepticism “to ensure that consumers are not harmed by the creation, entrenchment, extension, or undue exploitation of market power in an industry that affects every state, and virtually every congressional district, in the country”

In May 2018, Pascrell wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on his attempts to impose greater positive regulation on the broken live events ticket market. On March 22, 2022, Rep. Pascrell wrote to the heads of the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division urging them to overhaul federal guidelines to make it easier to overturn bad mergers. As part of the agencies’ joint inquiry into modernizing merger regulations, Pascrell flagged the Live Nation-Ticketmaster as a “posterchild of consolidation gone bad” and urged its dissolution.

Original source can be found here