Consequential legislation in Sacramento rarely dies a cinematic death.

Bay Area Assemblyman Matt Haney's AB 1720, the California Fans First Act died last week in the Senate Appropriations Committee — not with a floor vote, but with a quiet hold on the suspense file, the place bills go in Sacramento to be killed without anyone having to cast a ballot against them.

It’s a death without fingerprints or much introspection; the cause of its death pushed aside by news of its recent hallowing out: months of amendments had narrowed the antiscalping bill from a blanket ban on reselling concert tickets above face value to a much softer rule covering only venues of 3,000 seats or fewer. Even that watered-down bill was, by all appearances, too much for StubHub to live with.

The company's fingerprints are all over the corpse. So are State Attorney General Rob Bonta’s. State lobbying filings show StubHub spent $3.4 million fighting AB 1720 in California this year, including $2.6 million in the second quarter alone — a number that reportedly made it the second-biggest corporate lobbying spender in the state for the quarter, trailing only Pacific Gas & Electric and outspending the likes of Chevron, AT&T, and OpenAI. Ticketmaster, for comparison, spent about $91,000 supporting the bill. SeatGeek spent roughly $40,000; Vivid Seats reported $500. This was not a fair fight, and StubHub didn't intend it to be one.