ALBANY – Madison Square Garden could lose Bruce Springsteen and Yankee Stadium could lose future boxing matches if a little noticed measure banning “paperless ticketing” is approved, state lawmakers were warned yesterday.
MSG Vice President Joseph Lhota told the state Senate Investigations Committee that such leading artists as Springsteen, John Mayer, Michael Buble, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra were increasingly seeking to halt the abuse of their fans through ticket-scalping by demanding the issuance of computer-generated paperless tickets that can’t be resold at large profits.
“If an artist wants to provide a certain percentage of tickets to his or her show directly to their fan club or decides to utilize paperless ticketing to drive first sale tickets to loyal fans, that’s the artist’s prerogative,’ said Lhota.
“Imposing regulations that limit an artist’s ability to deliver more first-sale tickets at face value to their fans will inevitably drive some artists to perform and sell their tickets at venues outside New York where those limitations have not been imposed,” he continued.
Yankees President Randy Levine, citing pending a boxing event and college football games, said a ban on such ticketing “would be terrible, it would cause events not to come to town.”
He insisted that professional StubHub-type ticket resellers were behind the legislation, contending, “The advocates of this attempt to put restrictions on paperless tickets have one goal: stop this technology in its tracks in order to protect their financial interest.”
Gov. Paterson and the Democrat-controlled Assembly are backing a measure that would ban the paperless tickets as part of legislation extending the state’s two-year experiment legalizing the reselling of sports and entertainment tickets.
Several committee members expressed concern that paperless tickets couldn’t be transferred to relatives or friends of the buyers because of difficulties establishing proof of purchase.
But Lhota and Levine said modern computer technologies could make the transfers easier than they currently are.
Committee Chairman Craig Johnson (D-Nassau) said he was at a loss to explain Paterson’s backing of the ban.
Johnson said that while he had invited the governor to provide an explanation, “to date, we have not gotten a response.”