The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking legal action against Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and its Ticketmaster subsidiary with a lawsuit over ticket resale practices.
As NPR reports, the complaint, filed in federal court in California, alleges that Ticketmaster allowed automated ticket bots and large-scale resale operations to thrive by failing to enforce its own purchase limits, enabling resellers to acquire large quantities of tickets for popular events.
“The company routinely chooses to turn a blind eye to broker circumvention of ticket limits,” the FTC said in its complaint.
Ticketmaster’s “unlawful conduct and tacit coordination with brokers injures fans, who have paid far more than the advertised ticket price for both box office and resale tickets, and who are forced to pay inflated resale prices for high-demand tickets,” the complaint adds.
The FTC alleges that Ticketmaster profits from these resales, a practice sometimes called “triple dipping,” by collecting fees on the original sale as well as from both the buyer and seller on secondary sales.
The complaint states that from 2019-2024, consumers reportedly paid $82.6 billion on tickets from Ticketmaster, $16.4 billion of which accounts for the company’s mandatory fees. The average fees range from 24% to 44%. Ticketmaster controls roughly 80% of major concert venues’ primary ticketing and a growing share of the secondary resale market.
The lawsuit claims that Ticketmaster’s actions violate the FTC Act, which bars deceptive business conduct, and the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which prohibits using automated systems to bypass per-person ticket limits.
The challenges in live event access continue to draw attention across the industry. Per a press release from the FTC, the agency’s scrutiny of ticket sales has intensified under the Trump administration after a March executive order directing agencies to enforce the BOTS Act more aggressively. In 2022, Taylor Swift fans also filed lawsuits against Ticketmaster for alleged fraud, misrepresentation, and antitrust violations, according to NPR.
As AFROTECH™ previously reported, the FTC has taken similar actions against other major companies, including Amazon, as part of its ongoing enforcement of consumer protection and antitrust laws.
