Just one day after a California legislator introduced a proposal that would cap concert ticket resale prices at 10% above face value, a New York lawmaker followed suit with an even stricter bill that aims to completely outlaw markups on the secondary market.
New York state senator James Skoufis proposed the ban as part of a Friday (Feb. 6) amendment to the Affordable Concert Act, an already-pending bill. Introduced in May 2025, the Affordable Concert Act would create licensing requirements for ticket resellers and outlaw speculative ticketing — the controversial practice of resellers listing tickets they don’t have yet.
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First reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Skoufis’ Friday amendment to that bill would also make it illegal for brokers to resell tickets for New York live music events above face value, meaning secondary ticket prices would max out at the cost of the original ticket, plus fees from the primary ticketing source. Sporting event tickets are not covered by the proposed legislation.
“New Yorkers are sick and tired of the nightmarish process it takes to simply go see their favorite artist,” wrote Skoufis in a social media post Friday. “My bill, The Affordable Concert Act, caps all resale concert tickets at face value, among many other much-needed reforms. It’s time for state government to step up and protect fans.”
The New York amendment was brought up just one day after California state assemblyman Matt Haney introduced a spot bill (that is, an initial proposal still requiring more legal guidance) that would cap concert resale ticket prices in the Golden State at 10% above face value. Like New York, California already had a pending bill that aims to ban speculative ticketing.
So far, Maine is the only U.S. state to have a law governing ticket resale prices on the books — a 10% cap passed in 2025. Other U.S. states, such as Washington, have introduced similar legislative proposals. On a national level, Donald Trump-allied artist Kid Rock advocated for nationwide resale price caps during his testimony on Capitol Hill last week.
“I’m a capitalist, I’m a deregulation guy, but there’s no other way around this but to put a price cap on this,” Rock told members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Jan. 28.
Secondary ticket price caps are on the books in numerous European countries and Australia. The U.K. announced plans for a resale markup ban of its own this past November.
