BOSTON — Governor Maura Healey announced a new initiative Thursday, hoping to crack down on the high cost of resale ticket prices for concerts and sporting events.
The initiative, known as the Great Divide Act, is a nod to folk-pop singer-songwriter Noah Kahan, who just made history as the first artist to headline four consecutive sold-out shows at Fenway Park last week.
Kahan has also been open about his opposition to predatory resale practices, helping advocate for a similar bill in Vermont.
“Buying a ticket to a show or concert shouldn’t feel like winning a lottery ticket,” Gov. Maura Healey said.
The new initiative would cap ticket resale prices at 110% of their original price, meaning a ticket that costs $100 can’t be resold from websites like StubHub or SeatGeek for more than $110.
“I love my fans, and I want to protect them however I can,” Kahan said in the video message.
“Last week during his shows here, fans had a really tough time with that experience on the secondary market,” State Sen. Dylan Fernandes (D - Plymouth, Barnstable) said.
State Sen. Dylan Fernandes, who worked with the governor on this act, said the highest ticket price for Noah Kahan’s shows last week at Fenway was set at $400, with an average ticket price of $125. However, he said resale tickets on StubHub for Friday’s show cost between $900 and several thousand dollars.
“Artists alone could not tackle the market manipulation of secondary resellers,” Kahan said in the video.
“This happens a lot, it’s infuriating, it’s unfair, and it just costs way too much,” Healey said.
“The prices are getting so ridiculous that ordinary people can’t afford to go to these things anymore,” Lisa Delfini, who is visiting Boston from Connecticut, said. “Taylor Swift is a perfect example, right? Those tickets are going like in the $8,000-$10,000’s... Patriots’ games, same thing, 8,9, 1,000, $1,200 a ticket; I mean it’s crazy.”
The act would also cut down additional fees charged by the resellers like Stubhub and SeatGeek, capping them at 10% of the total cost of the resale ticket.
“That’s gonna save people an additional 40, 50, 60 sometimes upwards of $100 for every single ticket,” Healey said.
The act also would prohibit speculative tickets, which are tickets not in the possession of the seller when they’re listed for sale.
“We heard some about this during the World Cup where people went online, they bought tickets or thought they were buying tickets, they got to Foxboro only to find out those tickets had never been transferred over,” Healey said.
“State, federal, whoever can do something about it should be doing something about it,” Delfini said.
The governor said this act is part of her upcoming closeout supplemental budget.
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