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NIVA ’25 Conference Preview: Ticketing to Be a ‘Singular Focus’ This Year
As the music industry’s biggest players gather for the fourth annual NIVA conference, it’s clear that ticketing will be a dominant theme throughout the event. According to Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, the conference will tackle the burning issue head-on.
“Ticketing continues to be the singular focus,” Parker emphasizes, highlighting the pressing need for industry-wide change. “Ticketing is turning into the proxy battle in legislatures — federal, state and local — for the future of live performance.”
The conference aims to provide a platform for attendees to engage in open discussions about the current state of ticketing and its far-reaching consequences. This will include panels focused on different aspects of the issue, such as “Battling Scalping Goes to Washington, D.C.”, “Turn the Tables: Make the Ticket Resale Market Work For You,” and “How We Solve a Problem Like Chargebacks.”
In addition to these ticketing-specific sessions, attendees can expect conversations around local and federal regulations and their impact on the music industry. Parker underscores that the conference will not only focus on the challenges but also on potential solutions.
“This conference is an opportunity and a catalyst for us to come together, assess what’s happened this year — our wins and losses in states fighting against predatory resellers,” he emphasizes. “And we’ll be coming out of this conference with a plan to make sure that any sort of anti-consumer policy that’s being pushed by predatory resale platforms and brokers, we have a renewed strategy to address it and ensure that the freedom that fans should have from deception and fraud continues to reign supreme.”
The conference will also touch on other pressing issues facing independent venues.
Source: www.billboard.com
