Texas Takes Another Swing at Ticket Bots: SB 42 Would Let the Attorney General Fine Scalpers $10,000 a Violation
Sen. Judith Zaffirini's Senate Bill 42, filed on prefiling's first day, updates her 2023 anti-scalping law for the age of AI buying agents — empowering the attorney general to investigate bot-driven ticket resellers and fine them up to $10,000 per violation. For Metroplex fans who fight bots for seats at the AAC, Dickies Arena and AT&T Stadium, it is the session's most personal consumer bill so far.
AUSTIN — Every Dallas–Fort Worth fan who has watched a concert sell out in ninety seconds and reappear at triple the price knows the opponent. Senate Bill 42, filed by Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, on Monday's opening day of prefiling for the 90th Legislature, is Texas's latest attempt to beat it: the bill targets the price-gouging enabled by scalping bots — software that performs 'automatic and repetitive tasks' to scoop up tickets for resale at huge markups.
The measure would empower the Texas attorney general to investigate ticket scalpers who use the bots, with civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation, the San Antonio Current reported Wednesday. It is an update, not a new idea: Zaffirini carried a similar proposal in 2023 that Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law, and the new version refreshes the definitions and references in the Texas Business & Commerce Code — a response, the Current notes, to increasingly sophisticated AI agents that have complicated enforcement against automated purchases. The original push followed the disastrous Taylor Swift Eras Tour rollout, when fans worldwide struggled to compete with mass-buying scalpers.
SB 42 lands inside an affordability-themed filing week: Democrats, who swept the statewide slate and took the Texas House, made household costs a central campaign promise, and ticket prices are among the most visible. Fifteen states besides Texas already have similar laws, and the federal government has moved on the same target — the BOTS Act of 2016, an executive order from President Donald Trump in March 2025, and bipartisan federal bills — while a University of Michigan economics publication has estimated the global ticket resale market at $3.4 billion.
The bill's road still runs through a Republican-controlled Senate when the session convenes January 12, and the Current rates its future there as uncertain. But anti-scalping measures have drawn bipartisan support nationally, and few bills filed this week will be easier to explain at a Metroplex box office: the next time a bot beats a Fort Worth fan to a seat, SB 42 is the law that decides whether anyone in Austin can do something about it.
