Better On-Line Ticket Sales Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 5104, the Better On-line Ticket Sales Act, on which I joined in introducing with my colleague and friend from Tennessee, Mrs. Blackburn.

This bill would target the unfair practice of using software bots by scalpers to automate the process of purchasing event tickets from online vendor platforms.

As we saw at our legislative hearing on the matter in the Energy and Commerce Committee, the current lack of any Federal statute to deter the practice of using bots has turned the ticket industry in the United States into a rigged system.

For instance on December 8, 2014, a single broker used a bot to purchase over 1,000 tickets for a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden within the first minute of sale. By the end of that day, the same broker and one other had amassed more than 15,000 tickets to U2 shows across North America.

According to an exhaustive investigation by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, tickets purchased in this manner are then resold on secondary markets at an average of 49 percent above face value, though there are plenty of examples where the markup was more than 1,000 percent.

The people in the capital region of New York and across the rest of our great country worked far too hard to save money enough to see a performance or a game. They should not be shut out from buying tickets online at a reasonable price because a computer program beats them to the punch.

By following the example set by States like New York where unlawful ticket brokers have had to pay stiff penalties for their given actions, we can start to reel in these unfair practices and make sure that Americans have the access to events that they truly deserve.

The BOTS Act expands upon the work of these States by prohibiting the intentional use or the sale of bots software and by barring any tickets acquired in this manner from entry into an event.

This legislation would also establish civil penalties for this behavior on a national level, instructing the FTC or the Attorney General of a State to bring civil action against any persons found in violation.

There is clearly a great deal more that can be done to protect consumers and bring more transparency to the ticket market, but I do believe the BOTS Act represents an excellent step in the right direction for bringing accountability and trust to this industry.

I thank my colleague, Mrs. Blackburn, for her hard work on this measure. We have enjoyed working together to come together with this bill, and look forward to continued progress.

I encourage my colleagues to support the measure.

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