NIVA 2026 Minneapolis Kicks Off, Announces Fan Action Center to Combat Ticket Resale Exploitation

The 2026 National Independent Venue Association conference kicked off its opening session at the gorgeous Pantages Theatre (built in 1916) in Minneapolis with NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker leading a rather sprawling two-hour session. It was essentially a State of NIVA and included welcome remarks from senior NIVA leadership (including President Audrey Fix Schaefer and Head of Programming Jamie Loeb and Lauren Kehrli, producer of this year’s conference), a look at the venue advocacy group’s latest accomplishments and new initiatives with a welcome speech from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry, an excellent artist conversation with Cory Wong, several sponsorship activations and a Zoom discussion with principles in the Live Nation antitrust suit — it was a lot t o digest.

It stands to reason, considering all NIVA has accomplished in the last year: This includes helping lead the antitrust suit against Live Nation, which was won in April after state attorneys general continued the suit after the DoJ made what was widely considered an inadequate settlement. NIVA continues to lead the fight against exploitive ticketing practices in statehouses across the country, working with some 17 states on ticketing bills. Parker also announced the expansion of its Live Independent program with plans to launch Live Independent Month and Day in 2027. The session also included the NIVA Foundation’s Laura Wilson, who explained how NIVA has helped place 93 individuals at venues via its Venue Operations Experience (VOX) program.

One of the biggest news stories to break out of the opening session was the launch of NIVA’s Fan Action Center, intended to combat “misleading, fraudulent, exploitative ticket resale.” Parker’s announcement of the new initiative began with NIVA identifying 6,000 deceptive ticketing URLs impersonating artists, venues, and festivals with URLs like ChrisStapleton-tour.org, and Chrisbrowntour.org that NIVA sent to state attorneys general across the country, urging investigations into potential violations of consumer protection and deceptive trade practices laws.

The new Fan Action Center, Parker explained, has three main functions: to “report, advocate and share” whenever consumers are faced with unfair or exploitive ticketing practices

“Fans shouldn’t have to navigate a system stacked against them just to see live music,” said Stephen Parker in a statement. “Our discovery of 6,000 deceptive ticketing websites and URLs offers a troubling window into the scale of consumer deception occurring across the ticket resale marketplace. The Fan Action Center gives fans the tools they need to take action when they confront issues like these, whether that’s pursuing a refund, reporting fraud, contacting consumer protection enforcement, policymakers, or sharing their experience, while helping build momentum for meaningful reform.”

NIVA also called on StubHub, TicketNetwork, Viagogo (owner of StubHub), Concerts50, TicketSqueeze and BigStub to terminate affiliate and seller accounts for scalpers using deceptive websites or URLs that link to their platform.

_Originally reported by [Pollstar](https://news.pollstar.com/2026/06/08/niva-2026-kicks-off-in-minneapolis-announces-fan-action-center-to-combat-misleading-fraudulent-exploitative-ticket-resale/)._