Vermont Passes Ticket Resale Regulations, Banning Speculative Listings, Capping Prices at Indie Venues

The industry lobby is celebrating the passage of new regulations targeted at ticket resale in Vermont, signed into law last week. The new rules, set to go into effect on July 1, ban speculative ticket sales, adds new restrictions on the use of certain terms by resale websites, and installs price controls specific to ticket resale at certain venues.

Gov. Phil Scott signed H.512 on May 26, with the law set to take effect July 1. Supporters in the concert industry have hailed the measure as a major win against ticket “scalping,” with Live Nation-promoted Vermont native Noah Kahan serving as the public face of the campaign to get it passed in the state.

“Artists and fans can celebrate another win today in Vermont, says National Independent Talent Organization executive director Nathaniel Marrow. “Ticket buyers now have protection against the most predatory practices and know they’re not competing against bots and brokers for the best seats. Momentum continues to build across the nation to keep resale in check and we thank all the artists and advocates who lent their voice in getting this passed.”

As passed, the law bans the sale or offer of “speculative tickets,” defined as tickets not in actual or constructive possession when they are listed, advertised, or offered for sale or resale, including tickets not owned or under contract to be transferred at the time of sale. It also prohibits secondary exchanges, resellers, and websites that link or redirect to resellers from using deceptive URLs, misusing artist or venue intellectual property, or implying affiliation with a venue, team, or artist without express written consent.

It also puts a price cap on certain ticket resales set at 110% of the original ticket price. That cap applies only to events held at an “independent venue” that also meets one of several additional criteria: seating capacity of 3,000 or fewer; nonprofit venues hosting agricultural fairs, exhibitions, or multiday community events in addition to live performances; or venues primarily used for collegiate or amateur sports.

The law defines an independent venue as an event space that derives a majority of its revenue, excluding charitable donations, from ticketed events, is not majority-owned by a publicly traded company, and does not operate venues in more than 10 states.

That layered definition may make compliance one of the major practical questions surrounding the new law. Secondary marketplaces and resellers will need to determine not only whether a Vermont event falls within the statute, but whether the venue qualifies under the law’s ownership, revenue, operating footprint, capacity, nonprofit, agricultural fair, community event, or collegiate/amateur sports language.

The statute also includes a notable exception for resales conducted under a written contract with the ticket issuer, allowing contracted resale arrangements to exceed the 110% cap. That provision has been described by supporters as a transparency measure for venue-authorized resale, but it also creates another compliance distinction between open-market resale activity and resale inventory handled through platforms chosen by the venue or event promoter.

Violations are treated as unfair and deceptive acts in commerce under Vermont law. The entire subchapter is also scheduled to repeal on July 1, 2028

The final law reflects a narrower approach than the bill as originally drafted. Initially, the bill involved a much broader regulatory structure imposed on ticket resale, including refund guarantees, itemized pricing disclosures, speculative-ticket disclosures, anti-bot provisions, reseller licensing, surety bonds, transaction recordkeeping, and audit authority.

That scaling-back followed pushback from consumer advocates and resale marketplace interests over provisions they argued could limit consumer choice, restrict legitimate resale, or create enforcement problems. The narrower final law nevertheless preserves the core policy goal sought by the venue and artist lobby: regulating ticket resale while leaving primary market behavior exempt.

The price cap in that first draft was much broader than in the final language. As written, it applied to all tickets resold in the state, with no distinction made between the local independent venues that legislators in the state were largely hearing provide testimony on the bill and the broader, national effort to install resale-specific price caps driven by lobbying from affiliates of Live Nation Entertainment like the Music Artists Coalition (MAC).

Ron Gubitz, executive director of MAC, was quoted in support of the law by local media after its passage. “This is what fan-first ticketing legislation looks like,” he said. “It’s targeted, it’s enforceable, and it puts power back in the hands of the people who buy tickets and the artists and venues who depend on them.”

Kahan’s support gave the Vermont bill a prominent local face. The Vermont-born artist testified by video in favor of the legislation, saying he cared deeply about the fan experience and ticket accessibility. His manager, Drew Simmons, told The Boston Globe that the Vermont law was “the first step toward what we believe is going to be a trend that continues.”

Opponents have argued that the cap will not eliminate demand-driven pricing, but will instead push transactions away from regulated marketplaces and into less visible channels where consumers may have fewer protections.

Brian Berry, executive director of the Ticket Policy Forum, told The Boston Globe that his organization is “fundamentally opposed to arbitrary price caps.” He warned that the measure would not solve high ticket costs because “people can sell them elsewhere,” pointing to unregulated peer-to-peer spaces such as Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist as likely alternatives.

That argument has become central to the national debate over resale caps. Venue and artist groups contend that caps protect fans from extreme markups and prevent brokers from extracting value from events they did not create. Resale platforms and consumer-choice advocates counter that price caps do not erase market demand, and may instead make above-cap sales harder to monitor while increasing the risk that fans transact outside marketplaces with refund guarantees, fraud protections, and customer service infrastructure.

Vermont’s law is also part of a broader policy trend. Maine already has a resale cap on the books, while lawmakers in California and New York have considered similar measures under pressure brought by the same powerful industry lobby. Internationally, Ontario jammed through a strict price cap as part of a legislative package that also included deeply controversial measures eliminating government transparency requirements, while the United Kingdom has stalled in its move toward a ban on above-face-value resale. At the federal level, the TICKET Act has advanced as a more limited consumer-protection package focused on all-in pricing and speculative ticketing, though artist and venue groups have pushed to add resale price limits.

For Vermont, the next phase will be implementation. The law’s anti-speculative-ticketing and deceptive-site rules are likely to draw broad support because they target practices widely viewed as misleading or fraudulent. The price cap, by contrast, may prove more contested in practice because it depends on venue-specific definitions and because the law excludes individual consumers reselling tickets purchased for personal use from the definition of “reseller.”

That leaves Vermont with a law that is both symbolically significant and operationally complicated. It gives artist and venue advocates a fresh state-level win for resale price caps, but it also creates a narrow, venue-dependent regime that may test how easily face-value resale limits can be enforced in a market where ticket demand often moves faster than statutory definitions.