AB 1720 targets the secondary ticket market by imposing a strict cap on how much resellers and resale platforms can mark up tickets, while requiring clearer price disclosure to consumers. The bill also creates a private and public enforcement regime with per-ticket civil penalties and remedies.
The proposal changes how ticket sellers, resale marketplaces, and original sellers must present and charge for tickets: it forces upfront disclosure of original prices, limits additional marketplace fees, and carves out several categories of athletic events. For practitioners, the bill shifts compliance work to platforms and brokers and raises novel enforcement questions about tracing original purchase prices and policing fee structures.
At a Glance
What It Does
AB 1720 establishes a ceiling on allowable resale markups relative to the ticket's original sale price, makes mandatory-fee disclosure a required element of any offer, and limits the additional fees a resale marketplace may take on a transaction. It also builds a civil enforcement scheme that allows state and local prosecutors to seek penalties, injunctions, and disgorgement.
Who It Affects
Primary ticket sellers, ticket brokers and resellers meeting an annual revenue threshold, digital resale marketplaces and platforms that list or process ticket sales, and consumers who purchase tickets on the secondary market. State and local enforcement agencies would get authority to bring civil actions under the statute.
Why It Matters
The bill directly reshapes secondary-market economics by compressing margins and forcing platforms to reprice or restructure fees, while increasing compliance and litigation risk for brokers and marketplaces. For venues and rights holders it alters downstream pricing dynamics and consumer expectations around transparency.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill creates a set of transaction rules that start with the ticket’s original sale price as the baseline for what can be charged on the secondary market. It treats the total price paid by the consumer — not just the headline resale price — as the relevant figure for compliance, and bars resellers and marketplaces from structuring separate fees or charges to evade the price limitation.
The text expects original sellers to make the original purchase price visible on the ticket itself or on any ticket provided to a buyer.
Marketplaces receive direct attention: the statute limits the additional fees a resale platform can charge in connection with a ticket sale and requires disclosure of the ticket’s original price on the platform’s listing. The bill defines covered actors tightly enough to catch commercial sellers and digital platforms but contains a financial activity threshold that excludes very small sellers from the definition of “ticket seller.”Enforcement is civil and administrative: state and local prosecutors may sue to recover per-ticket fines, and prevailing enforcement agencies can seek injunctive relief, restitution, and disgorgement.
The bill escalates penalties for repeat violations and for knowing, willful patterns or practices of noncompliance. That design makes platform-level compliance attractive because a single noncompliant listing could expose an operator to multiple per-ticket penalties.Finally, AB 1720 lists several exclusions: it does not apply to professional athletic contests, transfers by season ticket holders for those contests, certain collegiate or amateur athletic events, or tickets to some international competitions.
The statute also supplies definitions for “original seller,” “resale,” “ticket resale marketplace,” and other key terms to anchor enforcement and coverage.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill ties the maximum allowable resale price to the ticket’s original purchase price and treats the consumer’s total outlay (including required fees) as the compliance baseline.
A resale marketplace may not take additional fees in excess of a fixed percentage of the ticket’s original face value on either the buyer or reseller side.
The statute requires original sellers and resale platforms to disclose the ticket’s original price on the ticket or on the marketplace listing.
Civil penalties are assessed per ticket, with escalating fines for subsequent violations and substantially higher penalties for a knowing, willful pattern or practice.
The law expressly exempts professional athletic events, season ticket transfers for professional teams, certain collegiate or amateur contests, and major international competitions like the World Cup or Olympics.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Price ceiling tied to original sale and anti-evasion rule
This provision anchors the resale ceiling to the original purchase price and treats required fees as part of the ceiling calculation. It also bars sellers from sidestepping the cap by tacking on separate processing, delivery, or other charges. Practically, sellers and platforms must compute the total price a consumer pays and ensure it does not exceed the permitted premium over the original sale price; accounting systems and checkout flows will need adjustments to prevent inadvertent noncompliance.
Required-inclusive advertising and permitted charge exceptions
The bill requires any advertised price to include all mandatory fees and charges, except for government-imposed taxes and actual postage or carriage charges to ship a ticket. That means listings and ads must present an all-in price or make the exclusions crystal clear. Marketing and UX teams will need to change display logic and pre-purchase disclosures to avoid misleading price displays that could trigger enforcement.
Marketplace fee cap and listing disclosure
Resale marketplaces face a direct limit on the additional fees they can charge relative to the ticket’s original face value, and the platform must display the original purchase price on each listing. This provision moves the compliance burden onto platforms that process payments or host listings: marketplaces will need fee-calculation controls, listing metadata fields for original price, and audit trails to demonstrate fee limits were respected.
Civil liability, escalation, and remedies
The statute establishes per-ticket civil penalties and escalates fines for repeat noncompliance and for knowing, willful patterns of violations. Enforcement can be pursued by the Attorney General, district attorneys, county counsels, and city attorneys, who may also obtain injunctive relief, restitution, or disgorgement. For defendants, exposure is ticket-by-ticket, which can multiply liability quickly if a single listing affects many tickets or transactions.
Exemptions and definitions that delimit coverage
Several categories of events and transfers are carved out — notably professional athletic contests and season-ticket transfers for those contests, as well as certain collegiate, amateur, and international competitions. The bill also provides operational definitions (original seller, resale, ticket seller, marketplace, rights holder) and a revenue-based threshold to define who counts as a covered ticket seller. Those definitions will drive who must update contracts, platform terms, and internal compliance rules.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Consumers who purchase resale tickets — the cap and all-in price requirement reduce surprise fees and constrain markups, improving upfront price comparability.
- Event presenters, artists, and rights holders — more transparent secondary pricing can protect brand perception and reduce downstream price volatility associated with large resale markups.
- Compliant resale marketplaces and ticketing platforms — operators that build compliant pricing and disclosure tools early can gain trust advantages and reduce litigation risk.
Who Bears the Cost
- Commercial ticket resellers and brokers — the cap compresses margins and may render some business models unprofitable, especially where acquisition costs exceed the permissible markup.
- Digital resale marketplaces and platform operators — platforms must change checkout flows, listing metadata, fee structures, and monitoring systems to ensure compliance, incurring development and operational costs.
- State and local prosecutors and the Attorney General’s offices — the per-ticket enforcement model can create caseload and evidentiary burdens, requiring resources to trace original purchases and prove knowing or willful violations.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill pits consumer protection and transparent pricing against the secondary market’s liquidity and private sellers’ ability to set prices: enforcing an all-in cap protects buyers from surprise fees and extreme markups but risks reducing available inventory, pushing transactions off regulated platforms, and imposing heavy compliance and litigation costs on marketplaces and resellers.
The bill’s central operational challenge is traceability: enforcement depends on connecting a resale listing to an identifiable original purchase price. Tickets change hands, are transferred across platforms, and may be reissued by venues; proving the correct baseline price for any particular ticket creates evidentiary complexity.
That will push platforms to retain richer transaction metadata and may spur disputes over whether an original seller’s posted price is the legally operative baseline.
Another tension is market adaptation. When resale markups and platform fees are constrained, supply-side responses could include stricter ticket transfer restrictions, increased use of nonpublic transfers, bundling of tickets with goods or experiences, or greater reliance on peer-to-peer, off-platform exchanges that the law may struggle to reach.
Exemptions for professional sports and certain events create uneven regulatory treatment across markets and could shift resale activity into the exempted categories or to out-of-state transactions. Finally, per-ticket penalties multiplied across many tickets can produce outsized liability relative to the economic gain from noncompliance, which could incentivize conservative business practices or defensive litigation.
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