State Budget: Ticket Resale Reform Included

NC State Budget Released: Ticket Resale Reform Included! Other Arts Requests Excluded.

NC House of Representatives and NC Senate leaders have agreed upon and released a FY2026-27 state budget bill (SB257) and conference report. Arts NC is grateful that the budget bill includes The Real Tickets, Real Fans Act language in its entirety meaning:

• Ticket resellers will be required to be transparent and clearly identify themselves as resellers.
• Deceptive language, images, and URLs will be banned so resellers cannot pretend to be primary sellers or to be endorsed by the primary seller.
• Ticket resellers will be required to provide weblinks to the primary seller, so consumers have a choice- and NC will be the first in the nation to do so.
• Speculative ticket sales will be banned, stopping the sale of tickets that a seller does not possess.
• The use of “bots” will be banned so sales restrictions can’t be circumvented.

Unfortunately, other funding and policy requested by Arts NC were not included in the state budget:

• NO K-5 Visual and Performing Arts Requirement
• NO additional funding allocated for A+ Schools of North Carolina
• NO addition funding for NC Arts Council grants
• NO changes to Grassroots Arts Program restrictions.

There is also language in the budget that would change the size of the NC Arts Council Board from 24 governor-appointed members to 9 over the next three years, with three appointed by the governor, “three upon the recommendation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and three upon the recommendation of the President Pro Tempore of the Senate.” Reducing the current 24-member Council to just 9 members may leave many voices unheard, particularly those from rural communities and other underserved populations. There was another budget provision barring the NC Arts Council from “awarding funds based on the race, ethnicity, or cultural identity of an organization’s leadership.” This is not the current practice of the NC Arts Council.

The budget bill will now be voted on by the NC House of Representatives and the NC Senate before being sent to Governor Josh Stein for his signature or veto. We expect this budget to become law very soon.

As agencies within the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the NC Symphony and NC Museum of Art receive direct state funding alongside the NC Arts Council and Arts NC is grateful that they have received funding this year. Arts NC appreciates when nonprofit arts organizations and colleges receive direct allocations in the budget for one-time capital projects, as there is no NC Arts Council program for these expenses. However, legislators sometimes allocate operating funding directly to a handful of arts nonprofits, which is often unsolicited by those entities. Arts NC discourages arts organizations from requesting this type of allocation because the NC Arts Council awards state government funds for operations and programming equitably across all 100 counties, with appropriate oversight and measured accountability.

Arts Allocations in FY2026-27 NC State Budget

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