It’s amazing to me, but Maine Democrats actually did manage to pass a bill that does good things that I mostly support this session, even if I have reservations about one particular clause. The bill, LD 913, An Act to Amend the Law Regulating the Resale of Tickets, seeks to rein in ticket resellers, who have long been a bane of my existence.

I enjoy live events, concerts and sports alike. I’ve been fortunate enough to see dozens of shows from my favorite band, Phish, and seen many professional and minor league sports events live. It’s always both a huge scramble and a hassle to get tickets these days, not only thanks to the ugly behemoth of LiveNation/Ticketmaster, but also due to ticket resellers. Even perfectly legitimate and law-abiding ticket resellers, like StubHub, are annoying (even if they are occasionally useful).

One of the big problems with ticket resellers is hidden fees. You click on a link to buy tickets at, say, $280, and by the time it calculates in all the fees, taxes and everything else, the price ends up being more like, say, $357.84. That might not make a lot of difference to many people, but if you’re trying to wrap a day of entertainment into a regular person’s budget, it could be a big deal.

If you’ve ever bought tickets to, well, anything these days, you know all about this. During the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission enacted a rule to rein in these hidden fees, and that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, it’s only a rule and can be reversed at any time. The Maine bill essentially enacts that rule as a law at the state level as one of its provisions.

It also bans automated buying systems called bots that seek to undermine built-in ticket limits in online systems. That’s great; artists are doing the best they can to limit those tools — well, let’s be honest, hacks — that allow resellers to scoop up all the tickets to an event, sometimes before they’re even publicly on sale.

Those automated systems are terrible, artificially driving up prices and blocking ordinary people from buying tickets to events. Some individual artists and teams are doing their best to stop these things, but it really deserves a comprehensive approach legislatively. That ought to be done federally, but it’s nice to see Maine taking the initiative in this particular case.

The bill also prohibits fake websites imitating venues selling counterfeit tickets, which one might imagine isn’t a huge problem in Maine — but I’ve had personal experience with it with Sea Dogs tickets, of all things. That ought to be already illegal and thoroughly covered under laws regulating fraud and consumer deception, but even if it technically falls under those provisions, it’s good to reinforce it separately.

A related provision requires resellers to issue refunds for counterfeit tickets, which is a different issue than fake venue websites. Ticket resellers basically act as a platform for individuals to resell tickets, and this bill makes the reseller website more responsible for regulating the bad actors in that marketplace.

Finally, the bill prohibits resellers from selling tickets that they don’t actually own. Astonishingly, this actually happens all the time. Some websites have strict regulations against this sort of thing, requiring resellers to post tickets in advance; others don’t particularly care. This bill essentially imposes the strictest possible standard on all resellers, making them responsible for any fake tickets on their site.

That’s the right approach, and it’s one that’s perfectly fair and makes sense. If ticket resellers don’t already do this, they ought to be considered suspect. This is essentially the equivalent of airlines and hotels overbooking — something else that’s also basically a deceptive practice that ought to be banned.

The bill, overall, is a reasonable one that was vastly improved through the legislative process from the original draft. The original version would have simply prevented ticket venues from limiting ticket resales, a practice that primarily benefits the venue; the new version is more comprehensive and much better.

It’s not perfect, because it includes a provision limiting ticket resales from being more than 10% of the original value, which Senate Republicans tried, and failed, to eliminate. That probably explains why most Republicans voted against it, which I understand, but the bill still does a lot of good things. It’s not ideal, but it’s a good start, one which will hopefully curb predatory ticket practices.