The US government has sued Live Nation over allegations that the live giant’s ticketing business Ticketmaster “deceives artists and consumers” by working with ticket touts who use illegal tactics to access tickets. This is despite the company concurrently claiming to be leading the fight against people who use such tactics. As a result, says the government, US consumers have lost out to the tune of billions of dollars.
As part of the legal proceedings, the Federal Trade Commission says it will seek civil penalties against Ticketmaster “and any additional monetary relief that the court finds appropriate”. Should the courts agree with the FTC’s position, those damages could be substantial.
Between 2019 and 2024 Ticketmaster collected $16.4 billion in ticketing fees - something the FTC also takes issue with, alleging that Ticketmaster “hid the mandatory fees” on tickets from consumers and “deceived the American people by advertising list prices for tickets that were substantially lower than the actual cost consumers paid”.
According to the FTC, Ticketmaster is aware that touts routinely breach limits on ticket purchases on its primary ticketing platform by employing multiple accounts, and then allows those touts to sell those tickets on its resale platform. One senior Ticketmaster exec admitted in an internal email that the company ‘turns a blind eye as a matter of policy’ to dodgy touting tactics, so it can profit by charging a commission on the resale.
As a result just five touts ended up in control of “6345 Ticketmaster accounts” and “possessed 246,407 concert tickets to 2594 events”. Which is why so many tickets to in demand events end up on the secondary ticketing market, including Ticketmaster’s own resale platforms, meaning more fans have to pay hiked up prices and additional booking fees.
President Donald Trump “made it clear” in an executive order earlier this year, says FTC Chair Andrew N Ferguson, that “the federal government must protect Americans from being ripped off when they buy tickets to live events”.
“American live entertainment is the best in the world and should be accessible to all of us”, continues Ferguson. “It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician’s show”. Which is why Trump’s FTC is “working hard to ensure that fans have a shot at buying fair-priced tickets and today’s lawsuit is a monumental step in that direction”.
Live Nation’s critics, including within the music industry, have repeatedly expressed concern about Ticketmaster’s involvement in both primary and secondary ticketing, which means tickets can be sold and then resold on Ticketmaster sites, with the ticketing company collecting fees on both transactions.
The live giant shut down its resale sites in Europe in 2018 after ticket touting became too toxic in European markets, but in the US it continued to be much more involved in the touting business - or ‘ticket scalping’ to use the American term. That said, in more recent years Live Nation has become critical of scalpers in public, calling for more regulation of secondary ticketing in the US, even proposing a price cap on resale.
Among those welcoming the FTC’s lawsuit yesterday was the National Independent Venue Association, whose Executive Director Stephen Parker says, “Today’s lawsuit has given credibility to what fans, artists and independent stages have believed for years: Live Nation and Ticketmaster exploit their dominance not just in concert promotion and primary ticketing, but in the resale market as well”.
Meanwhile the National Independent Talent Organization said it “applauds the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to reform an unfair ticketing ecosystem that too often does not serve consumers or artists. Changes are needed that address excessive fees, availability of tickets for fans at fair prices and keeping the process aligned with artists interests that benefit their fans”.
After Trump ordered the FTC to crack down on bad conduct in secondary ticketing, the government agency first targeted Key Investment Group, which operates a number of ticket scalping businesses. It’s accused of violating the BOTS Act, the US law that prohibits the use of bots, or other dodgy tactics, to source tickets from primary platforms in order to resell them.
But before the FTC could even get its lawsuit against KIG filed, it submitted its own papers with the courts claiming that Ticketmaster not only knew how the company’s scalpers source tickets from its primary platform, but that the Live Nation company endorsed and facilitated those practices.
All of that was happening, if KIG is to be believed, even though Ticketmaster has repeatedly insisted it has invested heavily in various technical measures to stop scalpers from employing bots and other dodgy ticket buying tactics to hoover up tickets for in-demand events.
In a release announcing its litigation against Live Nation, the FTC says, “despite implementing security measures”, Ticketmaster is aware that scalpers - or ‘brokers’ - “routinely bypass such measures by creating thousands of Ticketmaster accounts and using proxy IP addresses in order to purchase event tickets”.
The Live Nation ticketing business “allows brokers to post these illegally obtained tickets for resale on its platform”, the FTC goes on, which allows Ticketmaster to “profit from the additional fees and mark-ups it unilaterally adds to the resale tickets”.
The regulator then references an internal email, with Live Nation leadership on CC, in which “a senior Ticketmaster executive admitted that the companies ‘turn a blind eye as a matter of policy’ to brokers’ violations of posted ticket limits”. For example, “an internal review showed that just five brokers controlled 6345 Ticketmaster accounts and possessed 246,407 concert tickets to 2594 events”.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation “even offer technological support to brokers through a software platform called TradeDesk”, the FTC continues, “which enables brokers to track and aggregate tickets purchased from multiple Ticketmaster accounts into a single interface for simpler resale management”.
The FTC alleges that these, and other criticised Ticketmaster practices, “violate the FTC Act’s prohibition on deceptive acts or practices in the marketplace and the BOTS Act”. Which is why the agency and seven state level Attorneys General have filed a lawsuit.
The FTC’s legal action against Ticketmaster joins the US Department Of Justice’s separate litigation accusing Live Nation of anticompetitive conduct. The latter began on President Joe Biden’s watch and there was speculation Trump’s administration would be less interested in ramping up the regulation of Live Nation. But, alas, the opposite has turned out to be the case.
Although Ticketmaster has not been actively involved in for-profit ticket resale in Europe since 2018, a recent BBC investigation claimed that - when it was - the ticketing business’s UK division also cosied up with touts who were using illegal tactics to source tickets.
Meanwhile Ticketmaster’s primary ticketing site has been in the spotlight in the UK recently, since the public outrage that surrounded the sale of tickets to the Oasis reunion shows. The Competition & Markets Authority investigated and, in July, said it was considering legal action. Meanwhile a government report on the ticketing sector, prompted by the Oasis outrage, is expected imminently.