CALIFORNIA (CelebrityAccess) A California assemblyman has proposed legislation what would ban Ticketmaster’s “secret scalper program,” TradeDesk, from selling tickets on the secondary market.
Assembly Member Bill Quirk has proposed the legislation, likely inspired by an attention-getting report from the Toronto Star where two reporters visited the Ticket Summit conference in Las Vegas last year and spoke to, and recorded, a sales rep from Ticketmaster who implied that the software had the ability to shift tickets into the hands of so-called scalpers.
Quirk’s senior legislative aide has told the Star that its reporting “prompted a look into this.”
“It’s the goal of the state in enacting consumer protections in this area to make sure that average Californians have equitable access to tickets,” he said.
There are anti-bot laws in place in California and Quirk’s bill expands the definition of a bot to include groups like TradeDesk.
“While it looks and acts like what we would consider a bot, the distinction may be drawn that TradeDesk is actually a service, which allows a ticket scalper to more effectively skirt the law against use of bots,” a committee analysis prepared for the California legislature notes. “According to the Toronto Star, Ticketmaster employees have advertised TradeDesk in a way that is functionally indistinguishable from bots.”
