One of the Senators behind the US Better Online Sales Act has asked to intervene in the Federal Trade Commission’s big lawsuit against Ticketmaster, which centres on allegations that the Live Nation ticketing company has violated that very act. Passed in 2016, the BOTS Act put restrictions on how American ticket touts - or scalpers - source the tickets they want to resell.
In a new court filing, Senator Marsha Blackburn describes herself as a “primary architect” of the BOTS Act, which means she can offer unique insights on what Congress intended the act to do. She’s particularly keen that the judge doesn’t accept Ticketmaster’s interpretation of the act, which she says would have “harmful effects” on “ordinary customers”.
The FTC began legal action against Ticketmaster last year after President Donald Trump told the government agency to do a better job of cracking down on anti-consumer practices in the ticketing market, in particular by better enforcing the BOTS Act.
The FTC has basically accused Ticketmaster of colluding with US touts who both buy and sell tickets on the Live Nation company’s ticketing platform. It says Ticketmaster has, in the past, turned a blind eye to touts employing dodgy tactics to circumvent restrictions on how many tickets they can buy, because it could then charge a second commission when those touts resold the tickets at a hiked up price.
Not only that, but Ticketmaster has also provided technological support to touts via its since shutdown software platform TradeDesk, which, the FTC says, enabled touts to “track and aggregate tickets purchased from multiple Ticketmaster accounts into a single interface for simpler resale management”.
According to the FTC, these practices mean Ticketmaster itself - and not just the touts who use its platform - are in breach of the BOTS Act. But Ticketmaster strongly disagrees, arguing that the BOTS Act was not intended to stop a company like Ticketmaster working with touts in this way.
In her court filing, Blackburn explains that Ticketmaster is trying to have the FTC’s lawsuit dismissed on the basis the BOTS Act does not apply to the company because it “doesn’t sell or offer to sell resale tickets within the meaning of the act”, and it doesn’t circumvent any restrictions on ticket sales, even if it has allowed others to do so.
Blackburn wants to be able to submit an amicus brief to the court considering the case so she can rebut Ticketmaster’s “contrived assertion” that the BOTS Act does not apply in this case.
As a Congress member very much involved in the drafting of the BOTS Act back in the mid-2010s, she wants to be able to formally tell the court that “the BOTS Act’s plain text clearly applies to ticket platforms like Ticketmaster that knowingly enable ticket scalpers”.
None of which will help Live Nation and Ticketmaster as they fight this particular bit of US government-led litigation.