FTC sues Live Nation for failing to stop Ticketmaster scalpers

A laptop screen shows the Ticketmaster homepage.

Music industry titan Live Nation — and its subsidiary Ticketmaster — are facing the wrath of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), with the government agency and seven states filing a lawsuit alleging the company engages in “illegal” ticket resale practices.

The filing accuses the company of failing to curb large-scale ticket resale operations, automatic bots, and purchase limits, "tacitly" working with scalpers to "unlawfully" turn tickets for a profit. Music fans have been complaining about this problem for years, but it's just the tip of an iceberg, concealing an underground economy of individual scalpers, reseller networks, and hackers.

The FTC says that Ticketmaster — which has been accused of holding a monopoly on digital ticket marketplaces through its parent Live Nation — has been “triple dipping” its profits by collecting fees from brokers on the primary market, brokers on the secondary market, and concert goers, CNBC reported. The complaint calculates that consumers have paid around $16 billion in fees because of this system, and have violated the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act.

"A senior Ticketmaster executive admitted in an internal email that copied Live Nation leadership, that the companies 'turn a blind eye as a matter of policy' to brokers’ violations of posted ticket limits," the FTC wrote in a statement. "For example, an internal review showed that just five brokers controlled 6,345 Ticketmaster accounts and possessed 246,407 concert tickets to 2,594 events." Ticketmaster uses a system for brokers, TradeDesk, that should monitor high volume ticket buyers and be able to track those who exceed purchase limits and hold numerous accounts.

In addition, the FTC says the company has been falsely advertising ticket costs by listing prices that were lower than the total after fees and markups, a violation of the FTC Act.

Over the last year, Live Nation has been under close scrutiny by entertainment leaders and federal regulators, including an anti-trust investigation by the U.S. Justice Department in 2024. Celebrities have also lashed out against the corporation, including Taylor Swift, as fans have dealt with fluctuating ticket prices (known as "dynamic pricing"), excessively long queues, and bots programmed by resellers to quickly snatch up available tickets. A Minnesota bill regulating online ticket sales and prohibiting bots went into effect earlier this year.

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