How California AB 1349 Would Change Ticket Buying and Resale
The enrolled bill bans selling tickets you do not have, makes queue and limit evasion unlawful, and pays buyers double when a seller cannot deliver. Unsigned so far.
A California bill that would rewrite the state’s ticket-selling rules passed both houses on August 31 and was enrolled on September 4, which means it is now sitting with the Governor and is not yet law. AB 1349 is worth reading before it is signed or vetoed, because its provisions are unusually concrete for consumer legislation: it bans selling a ticket you do not actually have, it makes evading a queue or a ticket limit unlawful by name, and it lets a buyer who never receives a ticket sue for double the price. Here is what the enrolled text says, quoted from the bill itself, and what would change at checkout if it becomes law.
The quick answer
- Status: passed the Senate 29-5 and cleared Assembly concurrence 67-0 on August 31, 2026, then “ENROLLED SEPTEMBER 04, 2026.” It has not been signed, and nothing in it is in force today
- Speculative sales banned: a seller may not list a ticket without “actual or constructive possession” or “authorization from the event presenter or venue operator to sell the ticket”
- Marketplaces get an active duty: a resale marketplace “shall not knowingly or recklessly process payment, collect a fee, advertise, list… or facilitate the completion of a speculative ticket sale,” and “shall implement reasonable measures designed to prevent speculative ticket sales on its platform”
- Double damages: a seller who violates and “fails to supply a ticket at or below a contracted price” is “civilly liable to the ticket purchaser for two times the contracted price,” plus nonrefundable costs and “reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs”
- Bots and limit evasion named explicitly: it would be unlawful to “circumvent or evade an electronic queue, waiting period, presale restriction or presale code, ticket purchasing limit, account limitation, or other ticket distribution control,” including by “multiple Internet Protocol addresses, multiple purchaser accounts, multiple email addresses”
- Lookalike sites and “sold out” claims: using a domain or logo “substantially similar to” an official one becomes false advertising, as does claiming an event “is sold out when tickets remain available from the original seller”
Key facts at a glance
| Provision | What the enrolled text says |
|---|---|
| Selling a ticket you do not hold | Prohibited unless you have “actual or constructive possession” or seller authorization |
| What “constructive possession” means | You “fully paid for the ticket,” hold “a legally enforceable right to receive delivery,” and “received confirmation of purchase or assignment” |
| Selling before tickets exist | Prohibited before the ticket “has been made available for sale,” absent express authorization or constructive possession |
| Exemptions | Season ticket packages, multigame packages, withheld inventory, and playoff packages sold by a rights holder before the season |
| If the seller cannot deliver | Buyer may recover “two times the contracted price,” nonrefundable expenses, fees and costs |
| Buying over the posted limit | Unlawful, as is using software or services to enable it |
| Evading a queue or presale code | Unlawful, named directly in the statute |
| Fake seat claims | Unlawful to imply “a ticket listing reflects a specific seat, section, row, or location if the seller does not have a reasonable basis” |
| Pro sports carve-out | California teams, their venues, and league-owned entities may still withhold, reserve, transfer, or allocate inventory |
| Penalty route | Violations of the advertising section “constitute false or misleading advertising” under California’s false advertising law |
The core change: you cannot sell what you do not have
Section 22502.1 of the enrolled text is the heart of the bill, and it defines the practice it bans. A “speculative ticket sale” is the listing or sale of a ticket by someone who has neither “actual or constructive possession of the ticket” nor “authorization from the event presenter or venue operator to sell the ticket.” The definition of constructive possession is where the teeth are: the seller must have “fully paid for the ticket,” hold “a legally enforceable right to receive delivery of the ticket,” and have “received confirmation of purchase or assignment from the original ticket seller, event presenter, or venue operator.”
That description rules out the pattern most fans have run into: a listing that appears the day a tour is announced, priced high, for seats the seller intends to buy later at the on-sale. The bill closes that timing gap separately too, prohibiting a seller from listing a ticket “before the ticket has been made available for sale by the event presenter, venue operator, rights holder, or original seller,” unless authorized or already in constructive possession.
Marketplaces do not get to be passive conduits. The text bars them from knowingly or recklessly processing payment or collecting a fee on such a sale, and adds an affirmative duty to “implement reasonable measures designed to prevent speculative ticket sales on its platform.” What counts as reasonable is left to enforcement, which is the provision resale platforms have argued over.
There are carve-outs. The section “shall not apply to the marketing, advertisement, or sale of season ticket packages, multigame packages, inventory withheld at the sole discretion of the rights holder or venue operator, or playoff ticket packages by a rights holder or their authorized ticketing agent before the beginning of the applicable season.”
What a buyer could actually collect
Most consumer statutes stop at prohibiting conduct. This one prices it. Under the amended Section 22502.3, a ticket seller, original seller, reseller, or marketplace that violates the speculative-sale rules “and fails to supply a ticket at or below a contracted price or within a contracted price range shall be civilly liable to the ticket purchaser for two times the contracted price of the ticket, in addition to any sum expended by the purchaser in nonrefundable expenses for attending or attempting to attend the event in good faith reliance on seat or space availability, and reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs.”
Read the middle clause carefully, because it is the part that matters for anyone who travels to a show: nonrefundable expenses incurred in “good faith reliance on seat or space availability” are recoverable. A canceled flight and hotel booked around tickets that never arrived would fall inside that language, not just the ticket price. Attorney’s fees being recoverable is what makes a small claim worth a lawyer’s time at all.
This is separate from marketplace guarantees, which are contractual rather than statutory and vary by platform; those are compared in our canceled show refund guide.
Queue jumping and ticket limits become a legal question
Section 22505.5 would make it unlawful to knowingly use or provide “software or services” to do any of five things, and the list reads like a description of how scalping operations actually work:
- “Purchase tickets in excess of posted limits for an online event ticket sale”
- “Circumvent or evade an electronic queue, waiting period, presale restriction or presale code, ticket purchasing limit, account limitation, or other ticket distribution control established and disclosed by the event presenter, venue operator, rights holder, or ticket seller”
- “Circumvent or disable a security measure, access control system, or other control or measure used to facilitate authorized ticket sales or authorized entry”
- Use “multiple Internet Protocol addresses, multiple purchaser accounts, multiple email addresses, or other technological means” to exceed limits
- Use “software, services, automated means, or other technological methods to automate, coordinate, facilitate, or otherwise enable” the above
Two things follow for ordinary buyers. First, the conduct platforms already punish by canceling orders would also be unlawful under state law; how Ticketmaster enforces limits today is in our queue guide, and the presale rules those controls sit behind are in our presale codes guide. Second, the statute protects controls that are “established and disclosed,” which puts weight on the limit being posted before the sale.
One exception is written in plainly: nothing in the chapter restricts “a California-based professional sports team, a sports venue operator, or an entity that is owned, directly or indirectly, by the professional sports league” from “withholding, reserving, managing, transferring, or allocating ticket inventory for operational or business purposes.”
The lookalike-site and “sold out” provisions
New Section 22505.6 targets the marketing layer. It would be unlawful to advertise tickets “in a manner that is likely to mislead a reasonable consumer regarding the source, sponsorship, authorization, availability, price, or nature of the ticket,” and specifically bars using a “website, internet address, domain name, trade name, trademark, service mark, logo, design, text, image, or other identifying characteristic” that is “substantially similar to, or likely to be confused with” an official one.
Four claims are named as unlawful representations:
- That “a ticket is available from an authorized source when the ticket is being offered through resale”
- That an event “is sold out when tickets remain available from the original seller or an authorized seller”
- That the buyer is purchasing from the presenter, venue, rights holder, or original seller “when the consumer is purchasing from a reseller or ticket resale marketplace”
- That “a ticket listing reflects a specific seat, section, row, or location if the seller does not have a reasonable basis to make that representation”
Violations “constitute false or misleading advertising” under California’s false advertising law, which carries civil penalties and, for some violations, misdemeanor exposure. The domain-impersonation clause is the one most likely to change what fans see in search results, and it sits next to a problem we have already documented from the other direction, the fake-notice emails covered in our settlement email guide.
One definition worth noticing
The bill defines “ticket resale marketplace” to include “an original seller to the extent that the original seller operates a website or other online application that advertises, lists, markets for sale, processes payments for, or facilitates resale or original sale of tickets that were not offered to the general public during the public onsale.”
In plain terms, a primary ticketing company is treated as a resale marketplace when it runs resale, and also when it sells inventory that never reached the public on-sale. That pulls held-back inventory into the same rules as third-party resale. It is a narrow sentence with a wide reach, and it is the sort of provision that is easier to read now than to reconstruct from coverage later.
What happens next
The bill is enrolled, which is the step between passage and the Governor’s decision; the official status page records every action as it happens. It becomes law only if signed, and its provisions would take effect on the schedule California law sets for ordinary non-urgency statutes rather than immediately. Nothing above is enforceable today, and a veto would leave the existing ticket-seller rules, including the current cancellation refund requirements, in place.
This page will be updated when the Governor acts. If it is signed, the practical questions become which “reasonable measures” marketplaces adopt and how quickly listings without possession disappear from California-facing pages. Those are also the questions the federal Live Nation settlement leaves open from a different angle, covered in our settlement guide.
Bottom line
AB 1349 would ban listing tickets nobody holds, put an affirmative screening duty on resale marketplaces, make queue and limit evasion unlawful in its own right, and let a buyer who is left without a ticket recover twice the price plus travel costs and legal fees. It passed 29-5 and 67-0, and it was enrolled on September 4, 2026. Until the Governor signs it, it changes nothing, which is exactly why the text is worth knowing before the headlines about it start.
All provisions quoted from the enrolled text of AB 1349 dated September 4, 2026, and the bill’s official status page, both linked above and read on September 10, 2026. An enrolled bill is not law; the Governor’s action and the final chaptered text control.