Live Nation and Ticketmaster Sued for Working With Scalpers to Make Millions on Resale Tickets

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have been accused of allowing scalpers to hoover up millions of tickets so they can be resold on Ticketmaster’s own resale platforms at a steep markups to customers. 

A new lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission and seven states accuses the country’s biggest concert promoter and ticketing website of engaging in “three illegal practices that injure artists, cause consumers to pay significantly more for event tickets, and benefit Defendant’s bottom line.” The first two are: Allegedly hiding fees from customers until they check out, a tactic described as a “bait and switch approach” to advertising prices; and allegedly allowing ticket brokers to “exceed” the limits artists place on the number of tickets people are allowed to purchase at once.

The third accusation is arguably the most significant, with the FTC accusing Ticketmaster and Live Nation of earning “hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue by systematically violating” the BOTS (Better Online Ticket Sales) Act. That law, as the suit notes, makes it illegal to sell tickets purchased “in circumvention of measures used to enforced” ticket-purchase limits or other purchasing rules.

Rather than enforce these rules, the suit alleges, Live Nation and Ticketmaster “knowingly allow, and in fact even encourage, brokers to use multiple Ticketmaster accounts to circumvent Ticketmaster’s own security measures and access control systems… so that those same brokers can then list the unlawfully purchased tickets on Defendants’ resale marketplaces.” This, the FTC continues, “drives up the price of tickets and leaves ordinary fans unable to access the finite pool of tickets available at their face value.”

The FTC also alleges that this effectively allows Live Nation and Ticketmaster to “triple dip” on ticket fees, raking in money: First, when brokers originally purchase tickets; then when those same brokers re-list those tickets; and then lastly when consumers purchase those re-listed tickets.  
Editor’s picks

The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far

The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

In a statement, FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson highlighted the executive order President Donald Trump signed in March, which stated that the FTC must work with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to make sure ticket resellers are following competition laws; that scalpers are in compliance with IRS rules; and that BOTS Act is enforced to keep scalpers from using computer programs to scoop up tickets. 

Ferguson said the order was meant to “protect Americans from being ripped off when they buy tickets to live events, adding: ”American live entertainment is the best in the world and should be accessible to all of us. 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.”

A representative for Live Nation did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.

In a statement, Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, praised the lawsuit, saying it gave “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.”

He continued: “This is not just bad business; it is deception and abuse of monopoly power. By turning a blind eye to scalpers, even giving them the tools to bypass limits and harvest tickets, Live Nation has acted as the promoter, the primary ticket seller, the artists’ manager, and the scalper.” 
Related Content
Mr. Worldwide: How to Buy Pitbull Concert Tickets Online
FTC Sues Ticket Reseller, Alleging They Made Millions Off Taylor Swift's Eras Tour
From Willie Nelson to Kesha, Here's How to Get Live Nation's $30 Concert Ticket Deal
Live Nation Names Trump Crony Ric Grenell to Its Board of Directors

The FTC’s lawsuit significantly compounds Live Nation’s troubles with the federal government after federal prosecutors filed a massive antitrust lawsuit against the company last May. That case remains ongoing, with a judge rejecting Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s bid to dismiss a core element of the DOJ’s case this past spring.

The suit goes into great detail about Ticketmaster’s alleged preference for hiding fees from listed ticket prices. It cites internal documents going back to at least 2014 that show Live Nation and Ticketmaster “consistently chose to continue obscuring the true price of tickets after internal test results showed that accurate, transparent pricing would reduce sales.” 

The FTC claims it wasn’t until this past May that the company announced “their intention to incorporate fees into listed ticket prices.” This was well into the agency’s investigation, the suit notes, and right before a new rule designed to combat unfair or deceptive fees went into effect.

As for Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s alleged relationship with brokers and scalpers, the suit says the company has long known about specific brokers that “routinely create hundreds or thousands of Ticketmaster accounts” to acquire tickets en masse. The complaint cites an email that a Ticketmaster engineer sent an executive in 2018, in which the engineer suggested the company “routinely chooses to turn a blind eye to broker circumvention” of ticket limits.

The email reads in part: “We have a guy that hires 1000 college kids to each buy the ticket limit of 8, giving him 8000 tickets to resell. Then we have a guy who creates 1000 ‘fake’ accounts and uses each [to] buy the ticket limit of 8, giving him 8000 tickets to resell. We say the former is legit and call him a ‘broker’ while the latter is breaking the rules and is a ‘scalper.’ But from the fan perspective, we end up with one guy reselling 8000 tickets!”

Also in the suit is a chart that lists five brokers that allegedly controlled 6,345 Ticketmaster accounts and possessed 246,407 concert tickets to 2,594 events. Among them is Key Investment Group, which the FTC accused last month of violating the BOTS Act in a separate lawsuit.

The FTC further alleges that Ticketmaster provides “technological support for brokers who exceed ticket limits to list tickets for resale” by giving them access to a software platform called TradeDesk. TradeDesk allows brokers to “aggregate tickets purchased from multiple Ticketmaster accounts into a single interface for simpler resale management,” the suit reads. And it’s only available “to high-volume brokers.” 

While Live Nation-Ticketmaster has publicly advocated for more enforcement of the BOTS Act (which was passed in 2016), the suit alleges that the company has not only made millions off of tickets they “know were purchased unlawfully,” but also declined to use tools that would “prevent brokers from evading ticket limits… because doing so would decrease their revenue.” 
Trending Stories
Live Nation and Ticketmaster Sued for Working With Scalpers to Make Millions on Resale Tickets
Album Review: Cardi B Is Back and Out For Blood on 'Am I the Drama?'
Brett James, Songwriter for Carrie Underwood and Kenny Chesney, Dead at 57
Everything We Know — and Don’t — About the Missing Teen Found in a Car Registered to D4vd

For instance, the suit notes that internal documents highlighted a broker who, in 2018, broke the rules on creating loads of fake accounts. The next year, the same broker was flagged for using the “mass buyer model.” Still, this “violative conduct” allegedly continued into 2023 and 2024, with the broker retaining access to the TradeDesk software. 

This broker, the suit claims, eventually “purchased over 9,000 tickets on Ticketmaster to one night of Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour, and Ticketmaster sold over 2,500 of those tickets on the resale market. It then used 1,075 Ticketmaster accounts to purchase 8,518 tickets on Ticketmaster to a single Travis Scott concert in 2024, and Ticketmaster offered and sold 1,149 of these tickets on the resale market. The ticket purchasing limit at the point of sale for both of these events was 8.”