FTC Sues Live Nation, Ticketmaster for Allowing Ticket Brokers to Break Its Rules for Profit: ‘Directly Inflates Prices’

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC ) has filed a lengthy suit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster, seeking a imperishable injunction against what it describes arsenic years of “systemic unfair and deceptive practices.”

Joined by 7 authorities attorneys wide and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection, the 84-page national ailment filed successful the Central District of California seeks monetary relief, civilian penalties and restitution for alleged violations of the FTC Act, the Better Online Ticket Sales Act (also known arsenic the BOTS Act) and assorted authorities user extortion statutes.

The suit seeks to penalize Live Nation for failing to enforce the BOTS Act — an eight-year-old instrumentality the FTC is charged with enforcing but has lone enforced 2 times successful astir a decade.

The suit represents a 2nd large ineligible enactment against the institution by national and authorities officials successful 2 years — successful 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Live Nation connected anti-competitive grounds, arguing its 2010 merger with Ticketmaster gave the institution an unfair monopoly of the performance business. Today’s FTC ailment argues that Live Nation and Ticketmaster power “roughly 80% oregon much of large performance venues’ superior ticketing” and maltreatment that dominance done deceptive pricing, tacit collusion with summons brokers and violations of national ticketing law.

The suit alleges 3 main categories of unlawful behaviour by Live Nation: deceptive, oregon bait-and-switch summons pricing; collusion with summons brokers to evade summons limits; and what it calls “systematic violations of the BOTS Act.” Each illustration of unlawful conduct, according to the complaint, straight inflates prices, harms artists’ intent to support summons costs affordable and “extracts billions successful further profits for the defendants.”

Ticketmaster has agelong received complaints astir its drip pricing, which means customers presumption 1 terms portion buying for tickets and past are presented with a higher price, sometimes arsenic overmuch arsenic 30% higher, erstwhile fees are added. In caller months, however, the institution has been starring efforts to beforehand all-in pricing, which would amusement the full terms of a summons astatine the opening of checkout.

“Defendants’ deceptive terms show was nary accident,” the lawsuit, written chiefly by FTC Attorney Elizabeth Scott, alleges. “The plan resulted from years of interior investigating designed by Defendants’ employees that shows that Defendants’ revenues summation erstwhile their terms show is, successful Ticketmaster’s words, ‘less transparent.’”

According to 1 interior survey from 2015 cited successful the lawsuit, a Ticketmaster enforcement acknowledged that “‘the little transparent the higher the conversion,’ concluding that ‘this means we’re headed towards little transparency.’”

“Not until May 2025, heavy into the FTC’s probe — and conscionable earlier the effectual day of the FTC’s Rule connected Unfair oregon Deceptive Fees, which authorizes the FTC to question civilian penalties and different monetary alleviation against violators — did Defendants denote their volition to incorporated fees into listed summons prices,” the suit explains.

The 2nd large allegation is that Ticketmaster publically blames scalpers and bots for precocious resale prices portion privately allowing (and benefiting from) brokers’ wide purchases of tickets.

Artists typically acceptable per-event limits (4to 10 tickets per buyer), but Ticketmaster fails to enforce them, the ailment alleges, noting “Defendants routinely let summons brokers to transcend summons limits.”

One broker allegedly purchased 772 Coldplay tickets for $81,000 and resold them for $170,000, and 612 Chris Stapleton tickets for $47,000 and resold them for $89,000.

The ailment alleges Ticketmaster not lone turned a unsighted oculus but sometimes aided brokers, adjacent issuing warnings astir upcoming relationship enforcement changes truthful they could “consolidate illegally obtained tickets,” the suit alleges.

“To evade Ticketmaster’s enforcement measures, brokers routinely make hundreds oregon thousands of Ticketmaster accounts,” the suit alleges, including 1 reseller who purchased oregon created 13,000 Ticketmaster accounts implicit a four-year period.

“Ticketmaster forecast that successful 2020, alone, much than 5 cardinal of the performance tickets that it would connection for resale would beryllium tickets purchased implicit summons limits,” the suit alleges. “This was much than 55% of the performance tickets it anticipated would beryllium listed by brokers.”

Ticketmaster has “significantly accrued their merchantability of...