Consumer protection: ticket sellers.

Removed Section 22500, which required original sellers, ticket resellers, and ticket resale marketplaces to be registered and licensed, with misdemeanor penalties (up to 6 months jail or $2,500 fine) and a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation.

Removed extensive legislative findings and declarations (former Section 1) citing the music industry's $51 billion contribution to California GDP, 450,000 jobs, and the need to protect artist-fan relationships from predatory ticketing practices.

Removed former Section 22505.2, which separately prohibited using trademarked URLs without consent and prohibited resellers from representing an event as 'sold out' when tickets were still available from the original seller. This content is partially absorbed into Section 22505.6.

Removed the amendment and renumbering of Section 22503.6 to 22503.4, which provided an exemption for officially appointed agents of air, ocean, or motor coach carriers selling tickets in conjunction with tour packages.

Removed Section 22501, which required ticket sellers to maintain records of sales, deposits, and refunds for a minimum of 12 months after the initial sale.

Removed Section 22502, which required sellers to have actual or constructive possession of a ticket before listing or selling it, and to disclose seat location (section, row, seat number) and face price to consumers.

Removed Section 22508, which required ticket resellers and resale marketplaces to disclose that a ticket is a resale ticket and to include the face price of the original ticket in any listing.

Removed Section 22507, which required full refunds within 30 days for canceled events, gave nonprofit presenters the option to offer gift certificates or ticket exchanges instead of cash refunds, required refunds or credits for postponed events at the consumer's option, and allowed local jurisdictions to require bonds up to $50,000.

Restructured Section 22502.1 (speculative ticket sales): the definition now explicitly excludes ticket resale marketplaces from the general 'speculative ticket sale' definition, and a new subdivision (b) separately prohibits marketplaces from 'knowingly or recklessly' processing payment, collecting fees, advertising, listing, marketing, offering for sale, contracting for sale, accepting payment for, or facilitating speculative ticket sales. The old version applied the prohibition to 'a person' broadly with a separate marketplace provision in former Section 22502.2.

Added a new definition of 'onsale' in Section 22503: 'the official date and time when tickets for an event become available to the general public.'

Expanded the definition of 'ticket resale marketplace' in Section 22503 to include an original seller that operates a platform facilitating 'resale or original sale of tickets that were not offered to the general public during the public onsale,' broadening which entities fall under marketplace obligations.

Changed the confusion standard in Section 22505.6(b) from 'reasonably likely to confuse or deceive consumers' to 'reasonably likely to confuse or deceive a reasonable consumer,' shifting from an objective consumer standard to a reasonable consumer standard.

Section 22502.6 is entirely removed. This section previously prohibited event presenters, venue operators, rights holders, original sellers, or ticket sellers from revoking, canceling, invalidating, denying admission, or rendering unusable a ticket based solely on the lawful transfer or resale of that ticket. It also included carve-outs for fraud prevention, security, and season ticket administration.

A new subdivision (e) is added to Section 22502.1 exempting season ticket packages, multigame packages, inventory withheld at the sole discretion of the rights holder or venue operator, and playoff ticket packages from the speculative ticket sale prohibition before the beginning of the applicable season.

A new subdivision (f) is added to Section 22505.5 stating that nothing in the chapter prohibits, restricts, or imposes liability upon a California-based professional sports team, a sports venue operator, or an entity owned directly or indirectly by the professional sports league of which the team is a member for withholding, reserving, managing, transferring, or allocating ticket inventory for operational or business purposes.

Section 22505.6(d) no longer designates violations as an 'unlawful business practice' under Section 17200 (Unfair Competition Law). Violations now only constitute false or misleading advertising under Section 17500, narrowing the available enforcement mechanisms.

The provision making a violation of Section 22502.1 an 'unlawful business practice' under Chapter 5 (commencing with Section 17200) of Part 2 of Division 7 is removed, eliminating that enforcement pathway for speculative ticket sale violations.

Section 22505.6(b) changes the confusion standard from 'reasonably likely to confuse or deceive consumers' to 'likely to be confused with' and 'likely to confuse or deceive a reasonable consumer,' which is a subtle shift in the legal threshold for website and domain name impersonation claims.

The bill was reformatted from a traditional legislative document (with line numbers, page breaks, and centered headers) to a web-based presentation format including site navigation, quick search fields, version history links, and a 'Date Published' timestamp. No legal text was added, removed, or altered.

New Section 22502.6 prohibits event presenters, venue operators, rights holders, original sellers, or ticket sellers from revoking, canceling, invalidating, denying admission to, or rendering unusable a ticket based solely on the lawful transfer or resale of that ticket. Exceptions exist for fraud prevention, enforcing purchasing limits, investigating violations, protecting security, and administering season ticket programs.

The possession requirement in Section 22502 is simplified from 'own, possess, have actual or constructive possession' to just 'have actual or constructive possession,' and a new requirement is added that the ticket must have been made available for sale by the event presenter (including through presales) before it can be resold, unless the presenter has given permission.

A formal definition of 'speculative ticket sale' is added in Section 22502.1, covering any advertisement, listing, marketing, offer for sale, contract for sale, acceptance of payment, or sale of a ticket by a person who does not have actual or constructive possession of the ticket or authorization from the event presenter or venue operator.

A new set of definitions is added at the end of the bill, including a broader definition of 'consumer' as 'a natural person who purchases a ticket with the reasonable expectation of attending an event' and a revised 'ticket resale marketplace' definition that specifically references operating a website or online application and includes original sellers to the extent they operate such platforms.

Ticket resale marketplaces are now required to implement reasonable measures designed to prevent speculative ticket sales on their platform and shall not knowingly process payment, collect a fee, or facilitate the completion of a speculative ticket sale. Violations constitute an unlawful business practice under Section 17200 et seq.

The digest now frames violations as 'false or misleading advertising and an unlawful business practice,' connecting the bill's provisions to existing unfair competition law (Section 17200 et seq.) rather than relying solely on the chapter's own penalty structure.

Civil liability for failing to supply a ticket at or below a contracted price is expanded from 'ticket seller' to include 'original seller, ticket reseller, or ticket retail marketplace,' and the referenced violated sections change from 22502.1 or 22502.4 to 22502.1 or 22502.2.

Section 22505.5 is added to the list of sections being repealed and re-added, indicating modifications to provisions related to purchasing tickets in excess of posted limits and circumventing sales volume limitation systems.

A new defined term 'constructive possession' is added to Section 22503, meaning the person has fully paid for the ticket, holds a legally enforceable right to receive delivery of the ticket, and has received confirmation of purchase or assignment from the original ticket seller, event presenter, or venue operator.

The ownership/possession requirement for original ticket sellers and ticket resellers (Section 22502(a)) is expanded from 'own, possess, or have the contractual right to sell' to 'own, possess, have actual or constructive possession of the ticket, or have the contractual right to sell the ticket.'

The requirement for ticket resale marketplaces (Section 22502.1(a)(1)) is similarly expanded to include 'actual or constructive possession' as an acceptable basis for accepting a listing.

The unlawful acts provision (Section 22502.3(a)) is updated to match, making it unlawful to sell a ticket if the seller does not own, possess, have actual or constructive possession of, or have a contractual agreement to sell the ticket.

The practical effect is that people who have purchased digital tickets and hold a confirmed right to receive them (but do not yet physically hold the ticket) can now lawfully resell those tickets, which was likely ambiguous or prohibited under the prior version.

Nonprofit event presenters and nonprofit venue operators are now permitted to offer consumers a choice between a full refund and at least one of three alternatives when an event is canceled: (A) a gift certificate equal to the ticket value, (B) an exchange for a different event with equal or greater value, or (C) allowing the consumer to donate the ticket value to the nonprofit. Previously, all sellers were required to provide a full refund within 30 days of cancellation with no exceptions.

A new exemption was added to Section 22502(c)(3), excluding special fundraising events presented by nonprofit venue operators and event presenters from the requirement to disclose specific seat locations (section, row, seat number) when listing or marketing tickets.

Section 22507(a) was restructured from a single full-refund mandate into two subsections: (a)(1) retains the general full-refund requirement for all canceled events, and (a)(2) creates the new nonprofit alternative-options framework.

Assembly Member Patterson was added as a coauthor of the bill.

Added a new exclusion in the definition of 'entertainment venue' (Section 22503(c)(2)): amusement parks and fairgrounds are not covered by this chapter unless they are hosting an event, concert, or music festival that requires a separate ticket in addition to general admission to the park or fair.

Assembly Members McKinnor and Ward added as coauthors of the bill.

Minor typographical corrections throughout, including changing '$51 billion' to '$51,000,000,000', fixing 'ocean carrier or motor coach' to 'ocean carrier, or motor coach', and correcting 'copyright holder' to 'copyrightholder'.

Section 22505.5 was restructured to remove references to repealed sections 22503.5 and 22503.6 from its notwithstanding clause, now only referencing Sections 22503.4, 22504, and 22511.