California Ticket Bill Survives Last-Minute Revolt from Industry Lobby, Heads to Newsom

A California ticketing bill that many of the venue and music-industry groups behind it were trying to kill just hours earlier survived a dramatic final-minutes vote Monday night and is now headed toward Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Assembly Bill 1349 cleared the California Senate 29-5 late August 31 before returning to the Assembly, which concurred in the Senate amendments before the Legislature’s final passage deadline. The official legislative record now lists the measure as headed through engrossing and enrolling following final legislative approval.

The outcome preserves the substantially rewritten version of AB 1349 that TicketNews examined Monday, including new language expressly protecting the right of teams and venues to legally hold back ticket inventory and a broader safe harbor allowing professional sports interests to withhold, reserve and allocate inventory for business purposes.

It also represents a strange defeat for the National Independent Venue Association and more than a dozen allied industry groups that mounted a last-minute campaign urging lawmakers to vote against legislation many of those same groups had spent much of the session supporting.

The Coalition for Ticket Fairness, meanwhile, called final passage a victory for consumers.

“AB 1349 is a win for California ticket buyers,” CTF spokesperson Geoff Vetter told TicketNews. “California already has some of the strongest consumer protections in the country, and this bill goes further by cracking down on speculative ticket sales and making sure consumers have meaningful recourse when sellers willfully engage in bad behavior.”

Bill Passed With Minutes Remaining

AB 1349’s final legislative sprint was unusually tight even by end-of-session standards.

The Senate amended the bill at 11:45 p.m. on August 28 rather than taking a final vote. California’s Constitution generally requires legislation in its final amended form to be published for at least 72 hours before passage, making AB 1349 ineligible for a vote until approximately 11:45 p.m. August 31 — about 15 minutes before the end of the Legislature’s final day for passing bills.

According to an update circulated by CTF following the vote, the Senate took up the measure at approximately 11:46 p.m. and sent it back to the Assembly with only minutes remaining. The Assembly then concurred in the Senate amendments before the deadline.

The official legislative history confirms that sequence, recording the 29-5 Senate vote, the bill’s return to the Assembly and concurrence in the Senate amendments on August 31.

That was enough to rescue a measure whose political coalition had fractured dramatically during its final days.

CTF itself began the legislative process opposing AB 1349. The organization was listed among opponents during the bill’s Assembly consideration but changed its position after the measure was substantially rewritten in the Senate. At a June 29 Senate committee hearing, a CTF representative said the group had removed its opposition following the amendments and now supported the bill.

NIVA moved in the opposite direction.

In March, the organization said it was “proud to help architect” both AB 1349 and AB 1720, a companion proposal that would have capped covered ticket resales at 10% above their original price. NIVA and its California chapter promoted the measures as complementary pieces of a broader ticketing reform package.

AB 1720 was held by Senate Appropriations in August after months of questions about its enforcement costs, competition effects and whether imposing a ceiling on secondary-market prices would actually lower the underlying cost of tickets if existing price-surging mechanisms regularly employed by event promoters and the primary ticket systems were left untouched.

By the final weekend, NIVA and 16 allied organizations were urging both senators and Assemblymembers to reject the surviving AB 1349 altogether.

Holdback Protections Survive Final Passage

No additional amendment followed the August 28 rewrite, meaning the rights-holder inventory protections added during the final days remain in the legislation approved by lawmakers.

AB 1349 generally prohibits speculative ticket sales, including advertising, listing or accepting payment for a ticket when a seller does not have actual or “constructive” possession of it or authorization from an event presenter or venue operator.

Constructive possession requires the seller to have fully paid for a ticket, hold a legally enforceable right to receive it and have confirmation of the purchase or assignment.

The legislation also says a ticket seller generally may not market a ticket before it has been made available by the event presenter, venue, rights holder or original seller unless the seller is authorized or has constructive possession.

But the final amendment expressly removes certain primary-market activity from that restriction.

Section 22502.1(e) says the speculative-ticket section does not apply to the marketing, advertising or sale of season-ticket packages, multigame packages, playoff packages or “inventory withheld at the sole discretion of the rights holder or venue operator” when handled by a rights holder or authorized ticketing agent before the applicable season.

A separate provision is broader for professional sports. Section 22505.5(f) states that nothing in California’s ticketing chapter may be construed to prohibit, restrict or impose liability on qualifying California professional sports teams, sports venue operators or league-owned entities for withholding, reserving, managing, transferring or allocating ticket inventory for operational or business purposes.

The provisions do not legalize every conceivable ticket holdback. But they expressly recognize defined rights-holder inventory withholding as permissible within legislation that simultaneously restricts unaffiliated sellers from marketing unreleased tickets without authorization or an enforceable right to receive them.

That distinction was one of the most consequential additions to the final bill.

CTF Says Marketplaces Remain Accountable

NIVA’s final opposition campaign argued, among other objections, that AB 1349 created excessive liability for venues and promoters while failing to adequately hold resale marketplaces accountable for speculative listings.

CTF disputes that characterization.

“We’re also pleased the final legislation makes clear that marketplaces have a responsibility to prevent bad actors from using their platforms,” Vetter told TicketNews. “Meaningful consumer protection requires accountability across the ticketing ecosystem, not rules that apply to only one part of the market.”

The final statutory language supports at least part of that interpretation.

Although a ticket resale marketplace is excluded from the bill’s definition of the individual seller engaging in a speculative ticket sale, AB 1349 separately prohibits a marketplace from knowingly or recklessly processing payment for, advertising, listing, marketing or otherwise facilitating a speculative sale. Marketplaces must also implement “reasonable measures” designed to prevent speculative sales on their platforms.

That distinction became a central point of disagreement between groups that ended the session on opposite sides of a bill whose original political alliances had essentially inverted.

“The Coalition for Ticket Fairness applauds the Legislature for advancing a commonsense approach that protects consumers, preserves competition and consumer choice, and supports a fair, transparent resale marketplace,” Vetter said.

Opposition Could Now Move to Newsom

The remaining question is whether NIVA and the other organizations that tried to stop AB 1349 in the Legislature will now ask Newsom to veto it.

TicketNews contacted the public relations firm managing NIVA’s communications requesting comment on the bill’s passage and specifically asking whether NIVA and the other organizations that opposed the final legislation intend to carry that opposition to the governor’s office. No response had been received as of press time.

Such a campaign would extend a striking reversal for an organization that began the year not merely supporting AB 1349 but publicly taking credit for helping develop it.

It would also echo a pattern TicketNews has previously covered at the federal level. NIVA affiliates supported the bipartisan TICKET Act before lobbying in late 2024 to keep that compromise legislation out of a year-end spending package. Fix the Tix groups later pushed Congress to expand the federal measure with a resale price ceiling and more restrictive speculative-ticket language.

The California fight followed a similar sequence. NIVA and its allies began the session supporting a two-bill package containing both a resale price cap and broader ticketing restrictions. The price-cap legislation stalled, while AB 1349 was substantially rewritten into a narrower framework that ultimately drew support from an organization that had previously opposed it.

By the final hours of August 31, NIVA and its allies preferred to see that remaining bill defeated.

Lawmakers chose otherwise.

Newsom now represents the final opportunity to stop AB 1349 from becoming law. California’s legislative calendar gives the governor until September 30 to sign or veto legislation passed before September 1 and in his possession on or after September 1.