What just happened? The FTC is joining seven US states in suing Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation over accusations of collaboration with brokers who buy tickets to sell them at a higher cost. The agency also accuses Ticketmaster of misrepresenting the price of tickets using "bait-and-switch" tactics.
The FTC writes that Ticketmaster claimed to impose strict limitations on the number of tickets that consumers could buy for an event, yet brokers routinely bought millions of these tickets. These were then sold at a much higher cost to consumers.
The FTC says that Ticketmaster profits from the additional fees and markups it unilaterally adds to resale tickets by allowing brokers to post illegally obtained tickets on its platform, TradeDesk. This allows the company to double-dip on fees, profiting first from the original sale and again from the marked-up resale, while consumers face higher costs.
It's claimed that a senior Ticketmaster executive admitted in an internal email that the companies "turn a blind eye as a matter of policy" to brokers violating ticket purchase limits. The commission adds that just five brokers had over 6,000 Ticketmaster accounts and possessed almost 250,000 concert tickets to nearly 2,600 events.
Another part of the complaint alleges that Ticketmaster deceived customers by listing prices substantially lower than the cost consumers paid after fees and markups were added. These mandatory fees are as high as 44% of the cost of the ticket, and weren't added until the end of the transaction. From 2019 to 2024, the fees totaled $16.4 billion.
"President Donald Trump made it clear in his March Executive Order that the federal government must protect Americans from being ripped off when they buy tickets to live events," FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson wrote.
"It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician's show. The Trump-Vance 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."
In May 2024, the US Department of Justice and 30 state and district attorneys filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation over accusations that it abuses its position as the dominant force in the concert ticket-selling industry. The suit followed a two-year investigation following the ticket sales debacle involving Taylor Swift's 2022 Eras tour.
Ticketmaster, which controls about 80% of major concert venues' primary ticketing, has faced plenty of controversy over the years. An undercover investigation by CBC News and the Toronto Star in 2018 also alleged that the company partners with professional scalpers to inflate ticket prices, which in turn increases its profits.
FTC sues Ticketmaster and Live Nation for alleged collusion with resellers, deceptive ticket prices
