As Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ came to an end this weekend, US Senator Richard Blumenthal published an open letter to the US Federal Trade Commission reminding everyone that - despite the success of the tour - it kicked off with Ticketmaster “mishandling” the ticket pre-sale in November 2022.
“High-profile ticketing failures, such as Ticketmaster’s mishandling of Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’, have brought renewed attention to the persistent and pervasive issue of scalpers and misleading marketplaces”, the senator declares, while urging the government agency to “investigate and bring enforcement actions against deceptive and unlawful practices in the live event ticketing market”.
The FTC has both the power and a duty to do just that under the 2016 Better Online Tickets Sales Act, Blumenthal says, and the agency’s failure to properly enforce that act - it has “only taken action once” in eight years, Blumenthal points out - has “fostered a sense of impunity” among scalpers, inviting them to employ ever more “sophisticated schemes” to scam fans.
Despite dissing Live Nation’s Ticketmaster at the start of the letter, Blumenthal’s demands on the FTC will actually be welcomed by the live giant, because it focuses entirely on ticket touting, or ‘scalping’ in US terminology.
And while Ticketmaster does still operate in the secondary ticketing market in the US, Live Nation has recently become quite vocal on the need for more regulation of ticket resale, including of the scalpers themselves and the third party websites they use to resell tickets. So much so, CEO Michael Rapino is now even endorsing there being some kind of price cap on the unofficial resale of tickets.
Blumenthal’s letter also takes particular aim at the bots used by scalpers to hoover up tickets for in-demand shows from primary ticketing sites, which is another point Live Nation will support. Ticketmaster, of course, blamed the problems that occurred around the sale of tickets to ‘The Eras Tour’ on the extremely high-level of bots trying to secure tickets for Swift’s shows.
Bots are the one aspect of ticket scalping that is already regulated on a US-wide basis, the practice being prohibited under the Better Online Tickets Sales Act. In his letter, Blumenthal reminds FTC Chair Lina M Khan not only that the BOTS Act exists, but that it’s the FTC that is meant to enforce it.
“Despite the BOTS Act’s enactment in December 2016”, writes Blumenthal, the FTC has “only taken action once against three ticket brokers in January 2021”. This “under-enforcement”, he goes on, “has fostered a sense of impunity, inviting more scalpers with more sophisticated schemes, driving up prices for consumers, and creating a minefield of scams”.
It's not just the bots that Blumenthal criticises in his letter, he also lays into scalpers for their misleading communications - implying they are official sellers - and speculative selling - listing for sale tickets they are yet to secure.
And while those practices may not be specifically regulated in the US federal law in the context of ticketing, the Senator argues that the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on ‘unfair or deceptive acts or practices’ in commerce covers such things, so the FTC is empowered to take action there too.
Blumenthal concludes, “I urge the Federal Trade Commission to vigorously enforce our consumer protection laws in the live event market, including the BOTS Act, to protect concertgoers and venues from predatory ticketing schemes”.
And, just in case Team FTC were thinking this is something they could push back into the new year, after the Christmas break and, maybe, after the impact of the return of Donald Trump on the country’s federal agencies is properly understood, Blumenthal says that’s not going to wash.
He wants a briefing about the FTC’s “consumer protection efforts” in the ticketing market, “including work to warn consumers, enforcement actions and recommendations for strengthening our laws on ticketing” by no later than 20 Dec. Get to it, FTC!