Independent Venues & Festivals Call For U.S. States To Replicate The UK’s New Ticket Resale Price Cap Policy And To End Speculative Listings
New Evidence from Independent Stages Refutes StubHub CEO’s Claim that Speculative Tickets Are Just “Business as Usual”
Washington, D.C. (November 19, 2025) – The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) is calling on state lawmakers throughout the United States to follow the United Kingdom’s (UK) proposed ticket resale price cap set to be formally announced today, and pair it with strong enforcement against speculative ticket listings. Speculative tickets are listings for tickets that the scalper does not actually possess at the time they’re advertising them. This week, the UK acted to protect fans, artists, and small businesses from predatory resale practices by banning ticket resale above face value. NIVA is urging governors and state legislators to adopt the same protections here at home in states across the country.
The announcement comes days after StubHub’s third quarter earnings call, where company leaders dismissed concerns about speculative listings as “business as usual” and insisted there was “nothing to talk about.” Independent venues, festivals, and promoters say the opposite is true. Speculative tickets are flooding the American market, often appearing before any real on sale begins. These listings deceive fans, inflate prices, distort competition, and saddle small businesses with the damage when fans arrive with fake or unusable tickets.
Evidence from shows featuring Bonnie Raitt, Beyonce, Trampled By Turtles, Weird Al Yankovic, Josh Groban, Aimee Mann, Dan Soder, and more (see all below) shows the prevalence of speculative tickets deceiving consumers.
“StubHub’s CEO could not be more wrong,” said Stephen Parker, Executive Director of NIVA. “Speculative tickets are not ‘business as usual.’ StubHub’s extractive business model is exactly why states across the country should ban speculative tickets and follow the UK and adopt resale price caps. Speculative listings push risk onto fans and independent stages while platforms collect billions. StubHub’s stock plunge after its first investor call shows what we already know: the public is losing trust, legislatures are stepping in, and ticket resale in the United States is on the brink of fundamental structural change. The era of unchecked price gouging and advertising fake tickets is ending, and real accountability is finally on the way.”
The movement to ban speculative “tickets” without exception comes as prominent artists like Billy Strings and sports teams like the Savannah Bananas speak up to educate fans on the thousands of speculative and fake ticket listings at exorbitant prices across ticket resale platforms.
Speculative tickets often appear before the real on sale begins and can include:
Tickets to shows that have not yet gone on sale or never existed
Duplicate listings of the same ticket sold many times over
Listings for seats, sections, or rows that do not exist in the venue
“Zone” or “Seat Saver” tickets that vaguely promise a seat somewhere later, even though the seller has nothing in their possession
In every case, the reseller is offering something they do not currently have and may never deliver. That leaves fans holding worthless barcodes with no ticket, while independent venues and promoters absorb reputational and operational damage when angry customers show up with tickets that were never valid in the first place.
“Speculative ticketing turns live events into a gamble that fans never agreed to,” Parker continued. “It forces small venues to become the ones delivering the bad news and cleaning up messes created by third-party profiteers. That is not honest commerce, and it is not a healthy free market.”
NIVA and the Fix the Tix Coalition are currently working to introduce ticket resale price caps and bans on speculative tickets in dozens of states across the U.S. in 2026. The recent bipartisan passage of a ticket resale price cap in Maine and many more states planning to introduce ticket resale price caps for the 2026 session show that ending price gouging and speculative listings in ticket resale is possible in every state across the country.
Independent venues, festivals, and promoters have provided frequent examples of speculative “tickets” being sold or listed and several are listed below:
Before any primary tickets have been made available to anyone (Exhibits 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 12);
For shows that are for sale, but have seats or rows that don’t exist in a venue (Exhibits 3, 4, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23); and
At twice to 96 times the original cost of the ticket for shows that are on sale but have not yet had a single ticket sold (Exhibits 7 and 8).
Each exhibit below includes a corresponding screenshot.
Fix the Tix and NIVA urge both regulators and resale platforms to act:
Pass face value and fee resale ticket price caps
Ban speculative tickets without exception
Ban resale of tickets prior to the general on sale time of primary tickets for each show
Mandate that the ticket price and fees be displayed fully and broken out for every fan
Require platforms to verify inventory before allowing listings
Exhibit 1: The Britt Music & Arts Festival event page for Bonnie Raitt at the Britt Pavilion in Jacksonville, Oregon on June 3, 2026, indicates that the member presale does not begin until January 26, 2026, meaning no tickets are yet available to any consumer.
Exhibit 2: A timestamped November 17, 2025, StubHub listing is offering a “ticket” for the June 3, 2026, Bonnie Raitt performance priced at $453, even though no consumer can legally possess a ticket before the January 26, 2026, presale.
Exhibit 3: A StubHub listing is offering seats 9001–9004 for the Alan Sparhawk & Trampled By Turtles show at The Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, despite these seat numbers not existing in the venue.
Exhibit 4:
The official AXS seating maps for the same venue indicate that the 1,058-seat venue does not contain seat numbers in the 9000s, confirming the earlier listing cannot reflect real inventory.
Exhibit 5: The Revolution Hall event information for Aimee Mann on March 13, 2026, in Portland, Oregon, indicates that the artist presale begins on November 18, 2025, at 10 AM, the promoter presale begins November 19, 2025, and that the public onsale begins on November 21, 2025.
Exhibit 6: A StubHub listing timestamped 8:54 AM on November 18, 2025, is offering general admission “tickets” for $143 for the March 13, 2026, Aimee Mann performance at Revolution Hall, even though no presales or public onsales have happened. It also uses false scarcity messaging such as “less than 2% remaining.” The cost for a general admission ticket on the official website is listed at $63.23, as shown below.
Exhibit 7: The internal Ticketweb system for the October 3, 2025, performance of Rachel is Kozi at The Howlin’ Wolf in New Orleans, timestamped September 25, 2025, shows a general admission price of $10, and zero tickets had sold, confirming no inventory in circulation.
Exhibit 8: A timestamped September 5, 2025, StubHub listing is offering a speculative ticket priced at $964 for the same October 3, 2025, event, using false scarcity messaging (“Only 1% of tickets left”) despite no tickets being available from the venue at the time of the listing.
Exhibit 9: The official event webpage for The Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock, Arkansas shows that the general on-sale for Weird Al Yankovic’s June 20, 2026, performance at begins on November 21, 2025.
Exhibit 10: StubHub listings, timestamped November 18, 2025, show 118 speculative ticket listings, including tickets priced between $400 and over $1,027, for the same June 20, 2026, Simmons Bank Arena performance, all timestamped before the November 18, 2025, artist presale and the November 21, 2025, on-sale date, when no consumer could possibly possess a valid ticket.
Exhibit 11: The official event listing showing that tickets for Benjamin Tod at Higher Ground in South Burlington, Vermont, scheduled for October 9, 2026, did not go on sale until November 18, 2025 at 10 AM ET.
Exhibit 12: A StubHub listing, timestamped for 9:32 ET on November 18, 2025, offering a speculative ticket priced at $964 for the same October 9, 2026, event, using false scarcity messaging (“Only 1% of tickets left”) despite no tickets being available to the public.
Exhibit 13: The official event page for Josh Groban indicates that the general on-sale for his show at The Neal S Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu, HI, on February 7, 2026, begins on November 28, 2025, and that the earliest presale begins on November 19, 2025.
Exhibit 14: A StubHub listing, timestamped for November 18, 2025, offers 18 “tickets,” many priced above $700 for the same February 7, 2026, event, despite no real tickets being available to the public at this time.
Exhibit 15: Vividseats listed 2 tickets for $4,359.87 each in Floor Q, Row 22 for Beyonce’s show in Houston, TX on June 29, 2025 at NRG Stadium.
Exhibit 16: Compared to Vividseats’ listing, Ticketmaster does not appear to have a Row 22 listed. The last row listed is row 12 in the same section and venue for the Houston, TX show on June 29, 2025 at NRG Stadium.
Exhibit 17: Vividseats listed 2 tickets for $2,950.38 each in Floor M, Row 20 for Beyonce’s show in Atlanta, GA on July 14, 2025, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Exhibit 18: Compared to VividSeats’ listing, Ticketmaster does not appear to have a Row 20 listed. The last row listed is row 15 in the same section and venue for the show in Atlanta, GA on July 14, 2025 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Exhibit 19: Vividseats listed 2 tickets for $2,354.90 each in Floor 12, Row 24 for Beyonce’s show in East Rutherford, NJ at MetLife Stadium on May 29, 2025.
Exhibit 20: Compared to Vividseats’ listing, Ticketmaster does not appear to have a Row 24 listed. The last row listed is row 12 in the same section and venue for the show in East Rutherford, NJ at MetLife Stadium on May 29, 2025.
Exhibit 21: Vividseats listed 1 ticket for $2,354.90 in Field A3, Row 25 for Beyonce’s show in Las Vegas, NV on July 26, 2025, at Allegiant Stadium.
Exhibit 22: Compared to Vividseat’s listing, Ticketmaster does not appear to have a Row 25 listed. The last row listed is row 8 in the same section and venue for the show in Las Vegas, NV on July 26, 2025, at Allegiant Stadium.
Exhibit 23: An EventsTicketCenter listing for Dan Soder at Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall in Munhall, Pennsylvania on April 17, 2026, is offering “zone seating,” stating that the seller does not own the tickets and may not know the exact seat location. This confirms that the listing being offered is not an actual ticket.
ABOUT NIVA
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) is the national trade association representing thousands of independent live entertainment venues, festivals, promoters, and more. NIVA works to preserve and nurture the ecosystem of live entertainment. NIVA empowers members and their teams with member benefits, advocacy on the state, local, and federal levels, an annual industry-leading conference, and more.
NIVA led the Save Our Stages campaign, culminating in landmark legislation in 2020 that established the $16.25 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, the largest arts investment in U.S. history.
NIVA is committed to equity in its support of independent stages. It seeks to create and encourage opportunities for venues, promoters, and festivals owned, operated, and staffed by people of color, women, non-binary, LGBTQ+, veterans, and people with disabilities.
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