Recently my teenage daughter and I drove from the hinterlands of western Massachusetts to New York to watch the U.S. Open. Having taken up tennis last year, she was excited. As was I.

My excitement was coupled with relief that tickets for the qualifying rounds, the only portion that fit her school schedule, were entirely free. So much for the “no such thing as a free lunch” saying of my economics profession.

For the main rounds, tickets are far from free. As an economist, I was intrigued that the usual online tennis chatter about gear and technique was joined by outrage over ticket prices. Even hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman joined in.

We economists typically shrug off such outrage. High prices typically result from relatively low supply coupled with high demand. U.S. Open ticket prices would not be so high if so many people were not willing to pay so much. 

But then I dug deeper. I did not have to dig deep to find the villain of every sports fan or concert goer: Ticketmaster.

While the face value of tickets for the earlier rounds is a negligible part of a family trip to the U.S. Open, the typical fan has the same chance of returning a pro serve as buying tickets at face value: they sell out almost immediately.

And the purchasers are to a significant extent not tennis fans but rather bots, the computer programs that professional resellers use to bulk-purchase event tickets, a practice that Ticketmaster refuses to stop. 

In its ongoing lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster, the Federal Trade Commission publicized internal emails in which company executives admitted they turn a blind eye to existing bot restrictions. 

That is because, when scalpers buy the company’s inventory instead of actual fans, the company gets a more lucrative cash-in opportunity (faster-moving inventory and a chance at making more ticketing fees). Even better than getting paid to play tennis as a top pro!

For all these reasons, Massachusetts policymakers recently released a ticketing reform bill, called the Great Divide Act. 

To be fair, the Great Divide Act does have some good elements. Most notably, it would ban speculative ticket sales — selling tickets the seller doesn’t even own. (Such sales are currently legal.)

But rather than take aim at Ticketmaster’s enabling of bots, the legislation would impose a price cap on resale tickets. 

I was surprised when I learned that Ticketmaster has endorsed much of the bill. Didn’t Massachusetts design the legislation to take aim at … Ticketmaster?

Spoiler alert: not really. Despite its good intentions, the legislation is actually in the best interests of Ticketmaster. You just knew that was coming!

The bill’s price cap applies only to resale tickets, not original sales, which Ticketmaster dominates, controlling 80 percent of the marketplace. 

Worse, the cap can be waived at the discretion of a performer or venue, including those under the control of Ticketmaster’s own corporate parent.

So of course, Live Nation (Ticketmaster’s parent company) supports a resale cap: for venues under Live Nation’s control, tickets can already be priced optimally. And the company owns quite a few. 

Since their 2010 merger, Live Nation-Ticketmaster control more than 265 venues nationwide — including several of the biggest stages in Massachusetts — and manages over 400 touring artists. No wonder Ticketmaster isn’t exactly sweating bullets like a tennis pro at the U.S. Open. 

Overall, the proposed legislation, despite its good intentions, will mainly help Ticketmaster fine-tune the ticket market even further through its market consolidation and related anti-competitive practices.

Rather than a resale price cap, Massachusetts lawmakers should focus on enforcing protections against the bots that Ticketmaster allows to proliferate its platform. With bots kicked out of the marketplace, tickets priced intentionally lower for loyal fans will be more likely to be purchased (and retained) by their intended fans. 

As for that market consolidation, in April, a federal jury delivered Massachusetts and the other plaintiffs a major victory: Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster were found to have operated an illegal monopoly over live entertainment. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said henceforth no company would be allowed to rig the market against consumers. 

What comes next will be determined not by the jury but instead by the federal judge. So, stay tuned. But until then, the Great Divide Act — if it’s not modified — will most likely create an even further divide between Ticketmaster’s market domination versus an economist’s (or any ticket purchaser’s) idea of a competitive marketplace.

Jonathan Shefftz is an Amherst-based economist whose work includes analyzing economic damages from alleged wrongful conduct and evaluating the real-world effects of government policy decisions.