Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Committee adds Office of Consumer Protection to task force on ticket scalping and advances measure
Loading...
Summary
The committee amended and passed SCR173 SD1 to convene a task force on event ticket scalping; witnesses urged including both primary and secondary sellers, OCP asked to be a named member and offered to help compile the report, and testimony cited concerns about professional resellers pricing out Hawai'i fans.
The House Committee on Consumer Protection & Commerce on April 16 amended and advanced SCR173 SD1, a resolution to convene a task force to address event ticket scalping in Hawai'i.
Mana Moriarty, Executive Director of the DCCA Office of Consumer Protection, told the committee OCP submitted comments and asked to be named as a member of the task force rather than only being listed among stakeholders to be "engaged." "We're asking to be allowed at the table," Moriarty said, explaining the resolution's membership categories are broad and do not clearly specify OCP's role.
Kendall Gilbar of the National Independent Venue Association testified in support and described "professionalized" out-of-state brokers using technology to control supply and resell tickets at multiples of face value, which she said is pricing Hawai'i fans out of live entertainment. "Right now, Hawaii fans are being priced out of live entertainment by professional ticket scalpers," Gilbar said, and she cited constituent complaints and U.K. studies estimating a high share of professional resellers in some markets.
Tiffany Ajima, testifying for StubHub, asked the committee to broaden the task force's scope to include primary ticket sellers and to consider the ticketing ecosystem as a whole, saying "the majority of the tickets are sold on the primary market" and that the group should include ticket sellers so the discussion covers both sides of the marketplace.
Laurie Lam of the Ticket Policy Forum echoed the request to include primary market representation and to explicitly include OCP as a task force member so the agency has a clear role; Dennis Ling of DBEDT said DBEDT stands by its written testimony in support.
At decision-making the Chair recommended adding the DCCA Office of Consumer Protection as a named member and amending language to focus on consumer protection in other states rather than limiting the engagement only to Hawai'i regulators; the Vice Chair's recommendation to pass SCR173 SD1 with amendments was adopted. The transcript records the committee adopted the Vice Chair's recommendation, but the vote tally was not fully recorded in the hearing transcript.
Next steps: The measure was moved out of committee with amendments to add OCP and to clarify task force membership; the record does not include a full roll-call tally for the final vote.
