Are you one of those frustrated concertgoers who failed to secure tickets to 2NE1’s concert last month because of online scalping? A senator has filed a bill to prohibit and penalize ticket scalping.
Filed by Senator Mark Villar, Senate Bill 2873 or the proposed “Anti-Ticket Scalping Act” aims to regulate the purchase and selling of tickets to “protect consumers from exploitation and guarantee fair access to events of their favorite artists or performers.”
While Villar noted that there are already regulations against scalping in Pasay City and Quezon City through local ordinances, the issue of ticket scalping is considered a national issue.
According to a survey by Visa, 38% of Filipinos have attended concerts both locally and abroad. Villar also added that the Philippines is among the top concert and event destinations in the world with around 154 concerts scheduled in 2024 alone.
“However, the increase of demand in events or performances and the surge of concertgoers have also brought about several challenges, including the proliferation of ticket scalping or the practice of reselling admission tickets at an inflated or predatory price–undermining the consumers’ right to fair access to entertainment scenes and encouraging price gouging,” he added.
Under Villar’s proposed bill, SB 2873 “prohibits the offering, hoarding, selling, distributing, buying, dealing in, disposing of, or otherwise acquiring admission tickets for entertainment events, without written permission from the authorized event producer, organizer, and distributor, obtaining and reselling tickets by more than ten percent (10%) higher than the face value price of the ticket.”
Aside from those prohibitions, the bill also aims to penalize the “financing, managing, or operating ticket scalping activities on a large scale.” The proposed penalties for ticket scalping are as follows:
- P100,000 fine and/or imprisonment of six months for the first offense;
- P250,000 fine and/or imprisonment of one year for the second offense;
- P500,00 fine and or imprisonment of three years for third and subsequent offenses.
Aside from those penalties, a fine of P50,000 to P250,000 and/or six months to one-year imprisonment will be slapped on the persons who are:
- offering or selling admission tickets for entertainment events without providing the face value of each ticket;
- selling admission tickets on any platform other than the authorized reselling platform;
- willfully aiding or abetting ticket scalping as defined under the bill;
- willfully attempting to commit any offenses considered as ticket scalping as defined under the bill.
With some members of the team being avid concertgoers, Villar’s proposed bill against ticket scalping looks to be promising. However, it remains to be seen how this will be implemented especially with some scalpers using sophisticated methods like utilizing bots to bypass online queues.
