How Local Music Fans and Venues Stand to Win From New Legislation

Anyone who’s tried to attend a Beyoncé concert, BTS or, more recently, the Carolina Hurricanes, knows that it can be nearly impossible to get tickets. Thanks to bots, face-value tickets are often snapped up seconds after they go on sale, only to be re-sold by third parties for 10 or even 100 times their original price. 

The Real Tickets, Real Fans Act, passed as part of the state budget in early July, aims to regulate predatory ticketing practices across North Carolina. But consumers aren’t the only ones benefiting from the legislation: beloved Triangle independent music venues, like Cat’s Cradle and Motorco Music Hall, also stand to see significant benefits.

Online ticketing chaos and prohibitively expensive resales are often associated with massive international events like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. But “this is not just an arena problem,” Josh Wittman, a partner at Motorco Music Hall in Durham, told the INDY. 

“Ticket bots have gotten so efficient that all they’re trying to do is skim and flip a ticket,” Wittman added. “It doesn’t matter what size venue you’re talking about. It happens at every level.”

Bots are generated and used by a wide variety of people, from individual scalpers to luxury travel agencies trying to get VIP access to an event for clients. Often, however, bots are used by ticket brokers or the operators of ticket resale websites to turn a profit. 

The new act outlaws bots, including software that bypasses security measures aimed at protecting fans. It also outlaws speculative tickets sales, prohibiting resellers from offering tickets they don’t have or selling multiple copies of the same ticket. 

The NC Department of Justice and Attorney General Jeff Jackson are tasked with enforcing the law by investigating complaints from fans, artists, venues, or others. Companies found to be at fault are subject to fines in the tens of thousands of dollars. 

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Impact of Bots on Music Venues

Unlike larger, corporate-owned venues, places like Motorco don’t have millions in revenue to make up for the losses caused by predatory ticketing practices. Like most independent venues, the music hall relies on the sale of food and drinks during shows. So the number of fans in the room directly impacts their bottom line. 

When bots buy tickets en masse, it locks fans out of the show, Heather LaGarde, owner of the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, told the INDY. Say, for example, a bot—perhaps used by a ticket resale company or broker—buys 100 tickets. They’re resold at such a markup that the company can still make a profit even if they only resell 10. That leaves 90 still on the market, too expensive for the average consumer to afford.

Speculative ticket sales also mean fans can end up with a fake ticket or without a ticket at all, even though they paid for one. Ultimately, it all adds up to more empty seats at the venue, even if 100% of the tickets were sold.

“It’s just so dangerous for small independent venues. It can really make or break some of them,” said LaGarde. “If you have a small room—we’re a 750-capacity room—and 100 people aren’t there, it’s a financial hard hit.” 

That’s on top of the financial challenges independent venues are already facing, with inflation increasing operating costs, rents rising, and decreasing alcohol sales. In recent years, several local businesses and venues have closed across the Triangle, including C. Grace, The Green Monkey, and Missy Lane’s Assembly Room.

Across North Carolina, only 29% of independent stages were profitable in 2024, according to a report from the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA). 

It’s a similar story for artists, who rely heavily on the sale of merchandise like T-shirts and records, said LaGarde. The fewer people in the room, the harder it is to keep the doors open and the music playing. 

Wittman, of Motorco, echoed that sentiment, and said that  even a shortage of 30 people can mean losing $500-1500 in revenue. Not to mention, none of the excess money made off resale tickets is going to the musicians or artists—many of whom, especially the smaller acts touring at independent venues, are already operating on a shoestring budget. 

An Erosion of Trust

Independent venue owners agree the act is a good step, but say enforcement and education will be key.  The Real Tickets, Real Fans Act is similar to legislation enacted in Maine, Vermont, and, most recently, Washington, DC. Those laws, however, go a step further by setting a cap on resale prices. Ticketing reforms have also been proposed recently in California and New York.

In past years, several companies have been compelled to pay fines, or reached settlements, after they were sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over alleged violations of the federal Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act. 

In 2021, three New York companies agreed to a $3.7 million settlement after allegedly using ticket bots to buy tens of thousands of tickets, which were then resold to fans for millions of dollars. Earlier this year, ticket broker Elite Events agreed to pay $300,000 after the FTC alleged they “used a variety of unlawful tactics to bypass ticket purchasing limits … and resold those tickets on the secondary marketplace at a significant profit.”

More well-known ticket resellers, like StubHub, SeatGeek, and Vivid Seats, have also faced federal and class action lawsuits over allegations of deceptive ticket pricing — and in one case, selling tickets that they didn’t actually have.

Nick Walters, owner and general manager of The Pour House in Raleigh, argues that any money made from fines imposed by the North Carolina Department of Justice should go back into venues, or towards reimbursing artists or fans. But first, a complaint has to be filed.

Many fans aren’t aware of the illegitimacy of third parties involved in the sale or resale of tickets, according to LaGarde. Often, fans show up at the venue door unaware that the ticket they’re holding won’t get them into the show, she added.

“They believe that they’ve bought it legitimately through you because the fake websites are so good,” LaGarde said. “It puts you in the line of fire with your beloved fans, who think that you have betrayed them when you’ve had nothing to do with it, and you might not have a way to solve it for them.”

The Real Tickets, Real Fans Act gives people a way to file actionable complaints through the NC Department of Justice. Still, it’s important for venue owners to keep educating patrons about bad actors, said Wittman. For small businesses, trust is key. And losing that trust, while intangible, “definitely hurt[s] venues.”

“We deal with the emotional fallout of all this, and oftentimes it’s very, very difficult to get a person that is being denied entry into a show to understand why,” he said. “And oftentimes they blame the venue.”

Walters, of The Pour House, echoed that sentiment. 

“There’s a lot of misrepresentation, which leads to fans thinking that we’re behaving in bad faith and trying to deceive them,” Walters told the INDY. “The trust of our customers, just like any small business, is paramount to us being able to continue doing business.”

Walters and others are members of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), a professional organization that also advocates for ticketing reform. For more information, visit fixthetix.org. 

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