StubHub’s lobbying expenses have reached an all-time high in California, as the ticket resale platform has spent millions of dollars over the past few months looking to stop a bill that seeks to place limits on how much concert tickets are allowed to sell for on resale services in the Golden State.
The company reported nearly $2.6 million in lobbying expenses in California from April to June, per filings reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter. According to the Capitol Morning Report, that makes StubHub the second-largest lobbying spender in the state for the quarter, behind only Pacific Gas & Electric and ahead of the likes of Chevron, Verizon, AT&T and OpenAI, among others. It’s the most StubHub has ever spent on lobbying in any quarter in California, per publicly available documents. Overall, StubHub has spent $3.4 million this calendar year.
The company’s record spending follows AB 1720, a bill from state assembly member Matt Haney introduced in February that, if passed, would limit concert ticket resale prices to no more than 10 percent higher than a ticket’s original price. Since its introduction, the bill already has been abated with an amendment limiting the law only to smaller 3,000-capacity venues or lower, removing most of the major amphitheater, arena and stadium dates that usually draw much of the activity on secondary ticketing sites.
