Senate Bill 6175 creates a new statutory scheme by adding sections to chapter 19.345 RCW, titled the "Washington access and venue equity act" (WAVE act), and amends RCW 19.345.010 and 19.345.020. It regulates primary and secondary ticket markets by requiring commercial ticket resellers and secondary ticket marketplaces to be licensed by the Department of Licensing before operating, to maintain a surety bond, and to follow new disclosure, marketing, pricing, refund, and reporting rules. The Department is authorized to adopt rules, set fees, require at least two license types (ticket resale marketplace and commercial ticket reseller), establish bond amounts, and take administrative enforcement including suspension or revocation of registration for one to five years. Substantive legal changes include new prohibitions and consumer protections: bans on listing or selling speculative tickets, bans on listing tickets before the initial public on-sale and on reselling fan-club presale tickets, limits on resale price (no more than 110% of the initial ticket all-in price) and on service fees (no more than 10% of the initial ticket price, included in the 110% cap) with a sporting-event exemption, purchase-quantity limits matching the primary seller’s posted limit, requirements to conspicuously disclose resale status and that buyers are not purchasing from the primary seller, notification to buyers within eight hours of cancellations or changes, guaranteed refunds within two weeks when a ticket is illegitimate or entry is denied, response to consumer inquiries within three business days, and prohibitions on duplicating or selling a ticket to more than one purchaser. The bill defines a set of terms (including "speculative ticket," "all-in price," "primary ticket seller," "reseller," and others) and lists multiple exemptions (for example, K-12 and higher education, certain nonprofits under $500,000 gross, movie theaters, professional and collegiate athletic teams, and federally recognized tribes). The bill creates new civil and administrative penalties and limited private remedies: a base civil penalty of at least $1,000 per day for ongoing violations plus an additional penalty equal to the greater of $1,000 per violating ticket or three times the ticket’s price; licensing-related civil penalties for false application information or failure to update contact data (up to $1,000 per violation); surety bond claims by consumers and by original ticket sellers for certain violations; and a limited private right of action where a consumer can recover the greater of three times the initial ticket price or $500 per violation only when actual monetary damages or denial of entry are demonstrated, with exclusions for packaged sales. The Department must operate a public reporting website and publish an annual enforcement report to the legislature. The provided extracts are incomplete in places: one consumer civil action provision begins mid-sentence in the first chunk, some rulemaking details (fee levels, criteria for reduced fees for small nonprofits, procedures for adjusting bond amounts, and detailed claim processes) are delegated to the Department but not specified here, and the interplay between exemptions and certain provisions is not fully resolved in the excerpts. The act’s effective date is July 1, 2027 as shown in the provided material.

If enacted, this law will impose new, concrete obligations and costs on anyone doing commercial ticket resales or running a resale marketplace in Washington: they must obtain a license from the Department of Licensing, carry a minimum surety bond (at least $25,000, adjustable up to $100,000), follow strict disclosure and refund rules (including a full refund within two weeks for illegitimate tickets or denied entry), cap resale prices at 110% of the original all-in price and service fees at 10%, prohibit speculative listings and early listings before public on-sale, and face fast notification and customer-response timelines. Those changes mean resellers and marketplace operators will likely incur licensing and bond expenses, new compliance work to meet disclosure and refund timelines, exposure to heavy per-day and per-ticket penalties and possible license suspension or revocation, and limits on pricing and marketing practices; several groups (certain schools, small nonprofits, movie theaters, tribes, and specified sports teams/promoters) are carved out or treated differently. The Department of Licensing must create rules, set fees to cover administrative costs, run a public complaint website, and produce annual enforcement reports, so the state will add ongoing oversight duties funded by license fees. Consumers and primary ticket sellers should see stronger protections and remedies (including a private right to recover monetary damages in some cases), but the bill leaves important implementation details open—definitions for some terms, exact fee and bond-setting criteria, and some civil-action language are incomplete—so how strict or costly compliance will be in practice depends on rulemaking and the missing provisions.