IL Senate takes up bill to ban "Speculative Ticketing"

A new warning this week about so called "ghost tickets" as concerts and events ramp up this summer.

"Speculative ticketing is when somebody represents a ticket that they don't own and try to sell it to you," said CEO, President, Ravinia Festival, Jeffrey Haydon.

Leaders of Ravinia, Joffrey Ballet, Lyric Opera and other prominent Chicago arts groups joined together last week to voice support for state legislation that would bar deceptive ticketing practices that they warn are on the rise.

"Speculative ticketing has been around for awhile. We've seen a massive increase this year. The quality of the spoofing is increasing considerably with AI where a lot of people can fall for these scams and it's very sad." said Haydon

These listings often appear before official tickets are released to the public, and in some instances, the inventory is nonexistent. In these transactions, sellers are charging consumers for a promise they may not be able to keep by selling tickets they don't yet own. This practice causes significant harm to local venues, which must manage operational fallout and reputational damage when fans are overcharged or arrive with invalid tickets.

Ravinia recently released its concert schedule, and Haydon said he was shocked by the amount of speculative ticket sales.

"It's heartbreak at the gate because it's devastating because usually it's an important date or an important family night out, you think you have the tickets and then when you arrive at the venue, they turned out to be fake, or someone else is in what you thought were your seats," he added.

Haydon says the bottom line is you can't sell a ticket that you do not own and consumers need to do their homework about whether the official tickets have even been released yet and don't be fooled by fake websites and so called brokers and secondary sellers.

"The most important thing: buy your ticket from the venue itself. Really look and and make sure it's the venue, and that the logo is there and you verify it. " he insisted.

House Bill 4984 sponsored by IL Rep. Nabeela Syed, bans speculative ticketing in Illinois and will require a ticket in hand before reselling it. The bill moves to the state Senate.

"This would be great to have the lawmakers make this illegal. It still may not stop everyone from scamming but at least it puts the power of the Attorney General's office behind it." said Haydon.