If you’ve been to a concert or sports game in the last few years, you may have experienced one of the following scenarios.
Perhaps you showed up to a venue only to come up short because someone sold you a nonexistent ticket. Or you paid for a concert three times over because bots snagged up tickets before you could. Maybe you accidentally purchased a seat on a scam website. And most likely, you thought you’d nabbed a decently priced ticket only to discover a dizzying addition of fees at checkout.
For the second year in a row, a bill in the Washington State Legislature is trying to tackle some of these issues. If passed, House Bill 1648 would strengthen anti-bot regulation, force ticket sellers to register with the state and be more transparent about the total cost of a ticket, dampen the widespread practice of speculative ticketing and prohibit deceptive URLs.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Kristine Reeves, D-Federal Way, would take effect in 2026. It will likely be discussed and voted on in the House Committee on Consumer Protection & Business on Wednesday.
Reeves originally introduced the bill — the TSWIFT Consumer Protection Act, standing for Ticket Sales Warrant Integrity, Fairness and Transparency — last year, after the presale of pop star Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour crashed the Ticketmaster website and left fans in the lurch as bots and resellers snagged tickets, only to resell them at exorbitant prices.
The debacle earned Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation Entertainment scorn from Swifities and senators alike. It also put the spotlight on the many problems plaguing the wider ticketing industry, from the Eras Tour and Super Bowl to tiny indie venues.
While the Eras Tour’s Seattle stop is now in the rearview mirror, the problem is still here, Reeves said. “Consumers are struggling to get access to their favorite artists in the current market,” she said in an interview last summer. “And we still got to do the work to fix it.”
Washington is not alone in trying to do so.
Since the Eras Tour fiasco, various ticket transparency laws have been proposed in Congress, including by U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. And in December of last year, the U.S. Senate introduced the Fans First Act, which — much like House Bill 1648 — would require sellers to disclose the total price of a ticket, strengthen bans on the use of bots and allow for potential penalties.
Both bills also try to require more transparency from resellers to tackle the common problem of fans accidentally buying resale tickets without realizing that they’re buying secondary market tickets or that primary market tickets are still available.
The Fans First Act, introduced by U.S. Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and others, goes further than Reeves’ bill. It largely bans speculative ticketing — the widespread practice of resellers selling tickets they don’t have in hand.
But Reeves said she doesn’t want to wait for federal legislation. “Washington can still lead on these issues,” she said.
Last year, the bill went through various revisions but never made it to the floor. While the bill’s original version limited the use of dynamic pricing — tickets sold at fluctuating rates according to demand, also known as surge pricing — and banned delivery fees for e-tickets, those sections were scrapped, though the bill requires upfront disclosure of those delivery fees.
Reeves reintroduced the bill at the start of this session.
In the meantime, the bill has attracted national interest, including from the lobbyists of major ticketing companies like Live Nation and StubHub — last year, Live Nation paid a lobbyist more than $70,000 to represent its interests in Olympia — and a coalition of artists and music venue organizations, which includes SAG-AFTRA, the union representing more than 150,000 actors, recording artists and other media professionals; the Recording Academy; the National Independent Venue Association; and some local venues and artists.
Surprisingly, it is the group representing venues and artists that is currently opposed to the bill because of two provisions it says may end up hurting artists and venue owners while benefiting third-party resellers.
Even if it applauds most of its measures, the group says the bill doesn’t go far enough on speculative ticketing: The group calls for a total ban. (Reeves filed an amendment that gets closer to a ban on speculative ticketing, which will be voted on this Wednesday.)
The main remaining sticking point is a section of the bill that prohibits sellers from restricting resale, a tactic currently allowed in Washington that lets musicians keep prices and secondary sales in check. If this bill becomes law as written, Washington ticket buyers will always have the option to buy transferable tickets and will be able to sell them on any platform they wish.
Reeves says this will empower consumers to do with their tickets as they see fit. But the music coalition says this would make it harder for artists to keep prices low and restrict resale to, for example, fan-to-fan platforms, where tickets can only be resold for the original face value. This bill, the group wrote in a letter “would strip artists of their right to employ tools and policies that protect fans.”
Resale marketplaces StubHub and Vivid Seats appear to support the bill. While having argued for changes earlier in the process, representatives for the companies signed up to speak in support of the bill earlier this month.
“We support this bill because it will help to improve the ticketing market for fans by making it more fair and more transparent while also cracking down on predatory and deceptive ticketing,” said a Vivid Seats spokesperson in a statement.
A StubHub representative did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Meanwhile, Reeves says she has centered the consumer in the bill and its revision process.
“[I’ve heard from] lots of constituents, consumers who are frustrated by the process, who don’t have paid lobbyists,” she said last summer. “This needs to be centered around consumers in the state of Washington,” she added recently, “in a way that the consumers have recourse in a market that doesn’t work well for them.”
This coverage is partially underwritten by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over this and all its coverage.
