NYC’s Culture Belongs to the People, Not Ticketmaster

By Daneek Miller, Former NYC Council Member

New York City is the cultural capital of the world. On any given night, you can watch a Broadway show, catch a Knicks game, see a jazz set, or join thousands of fans at a stadium concert. That energy – our nightlife, our arts, our sports – is who we are. But for too many New Yorkers, especially people of color, that joy is slipping out of reach because one company has spent years tightening its grip on everything that gets folks in the door.

That company is Ticketmaster.

For decades, Ticketmaster has operated like it owns live entertainment. In many ways, it does. It controls roughly 80 percent of the primary ticketing market. It manages artists, runs promotions, locks venues into long-term exclusive contracts, and it even controls concessions. When one company can influence nearly every aspect of the live event experience, regular people literally pay the price.

Ticketmaster has positioned the market to box out independent competition, ensuring it controls every transaction from start to finish. We also have to acknowledge the history here: for decades, reselling was a hustle — often for Black men in our communities — who helped people get into shows when access wasn’t equal or online. Yet that work was criminalized and overregulated. Now, a multibillion-dollar monopoly is cornering that same secondary market, only this time with lobbyists, exclusive contracts, and political insiders clearing the path.

Prices have soared since the Live Nation–Ticketmaster merger, rising about 150 percent after inflation. For families already stretched thin, even a single night out now feels like a luxury. The most egregious part is how few tickets ever reach New York fans at all. For major shows, only about 10 to 45 percent of seats are released to the general public. The rest are held for elites.

Even when fans do everything right, they’re met with endless queues, crashing websites, and dynamic pricing that spikes in real time. And despite claiming to protect fans from bots that hoover up tickets like Ms. Pac-Man, Ticketmaster has admitted that it “turns a blind eye” because it profits when high-volume brokers resell tickets on Ticketmaster’s platform.

Now, facing investigations from the Department of Justice and 40 attorneys general, including New York’s, Ticketmaster has rolled out a new tactic: pushing so-called “resale price caps” on tickets as if they’re a pro-consumer reform. Don’t be fooled. This is another power grab.

If a monopoly under federal scrutiny is championing a policy, it’s not because it helps consumers. Price caps would gut the only part of the ticketing ecosystem Ticketmaster doesn’t fully control: safe, regulated resale platforms where fans have guarantees and protections. And we’ve already seen what happens when governments fall for this scam elsewhere. Countries that implemented price caps on resale tickets – France, Ireland, Australia – saw fraud skyrocket, often four times higher. When tickets can’t be resold at a fair market price on legitimate platforms, sales go underground. Scammers on social media fill the void, and fans lose protection, transparency, and any ability to verify a ticket is real. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder end up getting hurt the most. 

Ticketmaster is pushing New Yorkers toward the digital version of buying a ticket off a stranger on a street corner and hoping for the best.

In reality, the ability to resell, gift, or donate tickets is how real people live their lives. Plans change. Work runs late. Kids get sick. A locked-down, “use it or lose it” ticket helps no one except the corporation that issued it. Safe resale platforms exist so parents can swap tickets they can’t use, so a group of friends can score last-minute seats, and so buyers can rely on guarantees that they’ll get in or get their money back. Taking that basic right away – which some New York lawmakers are advocating – is not consumer protection, it’s consumer punishment. 

If New Yorkers want fairness restored, real reform is straightforward: break up the monopoly, end exclusive ticketing contracts, enforce existing anti-bot laws, and require real transparency about how many tickets are available. Above all, protect the right to transfer a ticket freely – whether that means reselling it, gifting it, or donating it – on the platform of your choosing.

Live entertainment has always been part of New York’s social vibe. It shouldn’t become a gated community reserved for insiders or the lucky few who win the ticket lottery. We cannot let one monopoly decide who gets access to the culture that belongs to all of us. The seats in our arenas, theaters, and stadiums are for the people – not a corporation writing the rules for its own benefit.