By most standards, AB 1720 is an extreme law.

But after years of dealing with a secondary ticket industry that refuses to self-regulate, drastic measures must

The California Bill known as the California Fans First Act authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney takes a hammer to a problem lawmakers have long tried to treat with surgical scalpel. After years of trying to regulate the concert resale ticket market and curb bad behavior like deceptive website URLs, speculative ticketing and the use of bots to buy tickets, the California Fans Act effectively outlaws the scalping of concert tickets.

Similar laws have already been enacted in the U.K., Ontario, Canada and Maine will legislation planned in a number of states and jurisdictions across the country. The California Fans First Act, which cleared two key committee votes earlier this month is simple in concept: cap the resale price of concert and live event tickets at no more than 10% above what the seller originally paid — including all fees.

In practice, if it becomes law, it would reshape a secondary ticket market that lawmakers have long tried to reign in and lobbyists representing major ticket resale company’s have long tried to keep unregulated. Now after years of failing to police its sellers, sites like Stubhub are facing being legally cut out of the concert market by fed up voters who would rather see resale outlawed than further regulated with laws the big resale sites dont enforce.

The numbers presented in committee were striking. Over 90% of resale tickets are sold not by individual fans but by professional scalpers, and fans pay on average more than 200% above face value on the secondary market. The bill's supporters pointed to recent examples that have captured public attention: resale tickets for Coachella Weekend One reportedly reached $4,000 to $5,000 apiece, despite original prices of $500 to $600. A 20-show Sam Smith residency at San Francisco's Castro Theater sold out nearly immediately at $120 a ticket — and then every subsequent ticket on the secondary market went for $700 to $800. Not a dollar of that markup went to the venue, the artist, or the workers.

"Every dollar that a fan overpays to a scalper is never received by the artist, the crew, the venue, or the local restaurants in that community where a show happens," testified Randy Nichols, an artist manager and board member of the National Independent Talent Organization. He went further, describing the secondary market not as a fan-to-fan exchange platform but as an "unregulated equities platform" backed by hedge funds and short sellers.

He cited StubHub CEO Eric Baker as an example, noting that Baker simultaneously runs a hedge fund — registered in the Cayman Islands — that channels hundreds of millions of dollars into ticket speculation. He also described incidents at Coachella where scalpers who had sold tickets they didn't yet own (a practice akin to short-selling) failed to cover their positions when prices rose, leaving fans unable to enter the venue.

Joe Rinaldi, president of the California chapter of the National Independent Venue Association and Managing Partner of Music Box San Diego, offered a ground-level view of the damage. "My staff stands behind a bar looking at a sold out floor that is 20% empty," he said. "These are ghost fans — people who wanted to be there but were diverted by a deceptive Google search or priced out." In a 500-capacity venue, a hundred empty seats on a sold-out night is a direct financial blow to staff, security, and the artists themselves.

Under AB 1720, ticket resale platforms would be required to ensure sellers upload proof of the original ticket price and cannot list tickets for more than 10% above what was paid. The bill's enforcement mechanism runs through the California Attorney General, and Haney repeatedly emphasized that the primary target is industrial-scale resellers, not the individual fan who buys a ticket and later can't attend.

"It's about creating accessibility for fans, not about making profit for yourself for an event that you really didn't contribute to," Haney told the committee.

Resale platforms would still be permitted to charge fees on top of the capped price, preserving a business model — just not the current one, where platforms reportedly charge fees of up to 40% on transactions. Crucially, the committee flagged a technical issue during the hearing: an existing statutory exemption for "primary ticket sellers" in the relevant chapter of law could inadvertently shield Ticketmaster's secondary market operations. Haney confirmed this was never the intent, and the committee recommended amendments to close that gap before the bill moves forward.

The opposition at the hearing was broad and vocal, ranging from StubHub and SeatGeek to the Consumer Federation of California, multiple Latino business coalitions, and criminology researchers from abroad.

The loudest objections came from Erin Mula of StubHub, who argued that her company represents part of the tiny 6% of the ticketing marketplace that is not controlled by Ticketmaster, and that the bill — by capping the secondary market while leaving the primary market largely untouched — would effectively eliminate that competition. "This bill has been introduced in 26 states, supported by Ticketmaster," she said, "and it has succeeded in none."

Haney pushed back hard on the framing that StubHub is meaningful competition to Ticketmaster. Committee member Assemblymember Isaac Bryan put it more bluntly, asking StubHub's representative whether the company has artists signed to it, venues under contract, logistics operations, or any role in financing tours. The answer to every question was no. "I would argue that StubHub is bottom feeding on the person-to-person transactions that should be happening between fans and consumers," Bryan said.

A more substantive concern came from Dr. Nicola Harding, a criminologist and founder of the Financial Crime Lab, who flew in from the UK to present research suggesting that price caps are correlated with a significant rise in ticket fraud. Her argument was one of displacement: when a legal cap prevents high-margin sales on regulated platforms, sellers migrate to social media and unregulated spaces where consumer protections don't exist. In her research across the UK, Ireland, and Victoria, Australia, she found a fourfold increase in ticket fraud in jurisdictions with price caps, with three out of five tickets sampled from social media in one study turning out to be scams.

Haney disputed the direct causal link, noting that the bill's own analysis found no evidence that caps were the cause of additional fraud in other countries. He also argued that requiring proof-of-purchase uploads on resale platforms would actually add a layer of anti-fraud verification. And he pointed out that Ireland saw more — not fewer — secondary market platforms emerge after its cap went into effect.

Several committee members expressed concern about a more prosaic unintended consequence: the individual fan. Assemblymember Bryan offered himself as an example, recounting tickets he'd bought to the final show of Adele's Las Vegas residency that he couldn't attend, which he sold at a significant premium. Under AB 1720, that would not be allowed. Haney acknowledged as much: individual fans would still be able to resell tickets, but not at a large markup.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who has her own history of working on ticketing legislation, pressed both sides on whether there was a more targeted approach — something that could go after industrial resellers and bot-buyers specifically while leaving room for the individual fan to recoup market value. She expressed concern that the bill, as written, might end up strengthening Ticketmaster's grip rather than loosening it. "The fact that Ticketmaster is supporting this bill gives me pause," she said, "because it makes me think this is a competitive advantage for them."

Assemblymember Greg Hoover used more pointed language, calling the bill "a sledgehammer where a scalpel would be more appropriate."

Looming over the entire hearing was the landmark antitrust verdict that landed the day before: a jury found that Live Nation illegally monopolized the concert ticketing market, following a lawsuit led by the California Attorney General and 30 other states. Haney argued that this development, while enormously significant, does not eliminate the need for secondary market reform — the two issues are legally and practically separate. "There's no reason that court would address the problems that are happening on the secondary market," he said. "And so that's what this bill is here to address."

The chair of the committee noted optimism that the antitrust case could address ticket transferability — a related consumer protection issue that AB 1720 does not touch — and that the pending court remedies could reshape the primary market in significant ways. But she agreed those changes would leave the secondary market largely untouched.

The bill passed out of committee on a preliminary three-vote tally, with members absent for the full roll call. It moves to the Appropriations Committee, where the debate over fiscal and economic implications will continue.

The committee chair called for the opposition to continue engaging with the author on refinements. Wicks offered to join working negotiations. Haney committed to strengthening language that focuses enforcement on industrial resellers.

The road ahead is steep. Similar bills have failed in 26 other states, and the coalition of opposition includes not only the obvious secondary market players but consumer groups and business associations who argue the bill's costs will fall on ordinary people. But the political environment may be shifting: a jury verdict labeling Ticketmaster a monopoly, a national conversation about the costs of live entertainment, and a generation of fans who have watched ticket prices spiral into the stratosphere since the collapse of paper ticketing may give California's Fans First Act more momentum than its predecessors in other states managed to find.

Whether a 10% cap is the right scalpel — or whether it is, as critics insist, a sledgehammer — is a question California's legislature is now formally debating.