Trying to buy concert tickets online? Looking for a seat at MetLife Stadium or the Prudential Center? A Broadway show? Online searches might turn up websites that appear to be affiliated with the venue but are actually reselling tickets at a significant mark-up.

After efforts to crack down on such resellers by Google, federal regulators and other states, New Jersey now has its own law taking aim at a tactic deployed by such sites: using URLs containing the venue or event name to appear more official.

Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill into law last month intended to protect consumers against so-called white-label sites, which also use paid advertising on internet search engines to appear at the top of search results for tickets.

Those tactics can mislead people into thinking they are buying firsthand tickets for their favorite performers and sports teams. Instead, the sites offer resale tickets, often at a significant markup and with higher fees than on other resale sites, according to a 2018 report on ticket sales by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The measure Murphy signed, S-2665/A-4081, imposes a fine of up to $10,000 for the unauthorized use of a venue or event name in the URL of a ticket resale website. The penalty increases for subsequent violations.

"It's really about protecting consumers," said Sen. Nellie Pou, D-Passaic, a bill sponsor. "It's really about making sure that the information is correct."

The marketing practices of white-label sites, also called private-label sites, has previously attracted the attention of federal lawmakers. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., wrote a letter with former U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in September 2017 asking that the Federal Trade Commission “review the use of private labels as vehicles for confusion, price obfuscation, and overall consumer harm.”

Separately, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson, who has long advocated for better transparency in ticket marketing, and Rep. Frank Pallone, D-Long Branch, were among a bipartisan group of congressmen who made the initial request for the GAO report on ticket sales published last year. Pascrell and Pallone subsequently asked the FTC to review the report's findings.

Shortly thereafter, the FTC announced it would hold a workshop "to discuss problematic practices in the online event ticket marketplace." The event was originally scheduled for March but has been postponed until June due to the recent 35-day federal government shutdown.

The FTC has been involved in the issue before. In 2014, for example, the FTC and Connecticut reached a $1.4 million settlement with one of the largest online ticket exchanges, TicketNetwork, and two of its white-label affiliates over deceptive marketing practices.

The news release announcing the settlement laid out how one of the affiliates advertised tickets for events at Radio City Music Hall in New York City using the URL radiocity.musichall-ny.com and the phrase “Official Ticket Source Online for Radio City Music Hall Tickets in NY.”

Consumers who clicked on the link were then taken to a site that featured photos, text and other material designed to make it look like the official website for the venue. In fact, it was an unaffiliated site selling resale tickets at a markup, according to the FTC.

Since then, several states, including New York and Nevada, have passed laws trying to combat deceptive marketing by white-label sites.

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Perhaps more effective than any state or federal law, Google itself implemented new advertising standards in February of last year for websites that resell event tickets. It has specifically prohibited the use of words like “official” in ads and the use of venue or event names in URLs unless the ticket reseller can prove it is affiliated with the event.

Google also requires ticket resellers to state near the top of their websites that they are not the primary provider of tickets and that their ticket prices may be higher than face value.

Pou praised Google for adopting those standards and said it was important for New Jersey to write some of those rules into law for all search engines.

State lobbying records show that the New Jersey measure was opposed by Vivid Seats, an online ticket exchange that, like TicketNetwork, provides white-label affiliates access to its ticket inventory and services, such as customer service and payment processing. A spokesman for Vivid Seats did not respond to a request for comment.

The measure was supported by the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, eBay and an organization called Fan Freedom, which advocates for certain ticket-related legislation around the country. A spokesman for Fan Freedom said the group gets some funding from StubHub, an online ticket exchange owned by eBay.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, white-label programs — broadly defined as when a company allows affiliates to connect its software to their own, uniquely branded websites — are used in many industries besides event ticketing, such as search engines for booking airlines and hotels.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the new date for the FTC's workshop on online ticket sales.

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com