North Carolina’s ticketing bill could help Ticketmaster get even stronger | Opinion
Ticket prices for sporting events and concerts haven’t just gone up, they’ve outpaced inflation.
A bill making its way through the North Carolina Senate, SB 849, is meant to address complaints about ticket prices and give customers some much-needed relief. But with it comes a hidden danger.
Supporters say the bill merely cracks down on scalpers, deceptive ticketing websites, and fraudulent ticket sales — all of which it indeed does and which is commendable. But buried within the legislation is a Trojan horse: provisions that would hand even more power to Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation — the very behemoth that a federal jury ruled last month is a monopoly that gouges consumers.
Following the news of the jury’s verdict, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, who was one of 29 state attorneys general to successfully bring the litigation to court, said that “every fan who’s watched prices pile up on a concert ticket just got proof they were right to feel mistreated by a monopoly” and that they are now “closer to breaking down their illegal monopoly.”
That won’t be the case if SB 849 passes.
The bill’s major shortcoming is that it doesn’t really clamp down on Ticketmaster. Instead, it gives the company more power to squeeze out some of the few remaining alternative ticket providers that consumers have to choose from.
Consumers buy resale tickets because they’re often less expensive than what’s available directly through Ticketmaster, especially once Ticketmaster’s mandatory fees — which can exceed 30 percent — are added to the final price. Unfortunately, this bill restricts many forms of resale tickets, including sales connected to presales and seats from season ticket holders who weren’t yet sent the tickets from the group or team in question even though they lawfully own the tickets.
Put another way, this bill would allow venues and promoters to tell season ticket holders when they can sell their tickets.
And here’s the kicker: Under the terms of the legislation, restrictions on resale before the public sale can be lifted if authorized by the venue, promoter, or ticketing company — all three of which are more often than not Ticketmaster, which controls 80% of the primary ticketing marketplace and is the world’s largest concert promoter and venue operator. That raises an obvious question: is this legislation really about protecting consumers, or about protecting the financial interests of the dominant industry players who already control the market?
Consumers purchasing through major resale marketplaces are already protected by refund guarantees and ticket-delivery policies. Restricting these listings, which North Carolinians voluntarily purchase for a reason, will not protect fans. All it will do is give us fewer choices and higher prices, locking us further into the tentacles of a rogue corporate entity that a federal jury charged with price gouging.
Real reform requires transparency, competition, and anti-monopoly enforcement. Real reform targets hidden fees, anti-competitive exclusivity arrangements, abusive scalping bots, and practices that lock venues and artists into one dominant ecosystem.
But limiting secondary-market competition while leaving the industry giant largely untouched risks making things worse.
Fans benefit from more competition and transparency, not more control by Ticketmaster.
Here’s hoping North Carolina lawmakers amend SB 849 so that it provides us with more of the former and less of the latter.
Thomas Cowart Goolsby is a former North Carolina State Senator representing New Hanover County.
This story was originally published May 31, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "North Carolina’s ticketing bill could help Ticketmaster get even stronger | Opinion."
