The Federal Trade Commission and seven states in the US have sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster for “tacitly coordinating with brokers and allowing them to harvest millions of dollars worth of tickets in the primary market”.
The action alleges that Live Nation and its ticketing arm illegally work with touts who buy up large volumes of tickets. These harvested tickets are then sold at a “substantial mark-up in the secondary market, causing consumers to pay significantly more than the face value of the ticket,” according to the FTC.
Live Nation/Ticketmaster has not yet commented on the legal action.
As well as collecting fees on the primary ticket sales to scalpers, Ticketmaster would then receive more income from fees in the secondary market.
Ticketmaster is the leading provider of tickets for concerts, controlling about 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing. It also has a growing share of ticket resales in the secondary market. From 2019 to 2024, consumers spent more than $82.6 billion purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster.
The FTC alleges that, while Ticketmaster maintains that its business model is at odds with scalpers who routinely exceed ticket limits, in private it “acknowledges that its business model and bottom line benefit from brokers preventing ordinary Americans from purchasing tickets to the shows they want to see at the prices artists set” .
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
Andrew N Ferguson
Despite implementing security measures, the FTC said Ticketmaster is aware that brokers routinely bypass such measures by creating thousands of Ticketmaster accounts and using proxy IP addresses in order to purchase event tickets.
“Ticketmaster nevertheless allows brokers to post these illegally obtained tickets for resale on its platform, then profits from the additional fees and mark-ups it unilaterally adds to the resale tickets,” said the FTC.
It cited an internal review showing that just five brokers controlled 6,345 Ticketmaster accounts and possessed 246,407 concert tickets to 2,594 events.
The FTC further alleged in a complaint that Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment deceived artists and consumers by engaging in bait-and-switch pricing through advertising lower prices for tickets than the price that consumers must pay to purchase tickets; deceptively claimed to impose strict limits on the number of tickets that consumers could purchase for an event, even though ticket brokers routinely and substantially exceeded those limits; and sold millions of tickets, often at much higher cost to consumers, on its resale platform that those brokers obtained in excess of artists’ ticket limits.
The FTC alleges that these practices violate the FTC Act’s prohibition on deceptive acts or practices in the marketplace and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act. The FTC is seeking civil penalties against Ticketmaster.
The lawsuit follows the row over Oasis ticket prices in the UK and the Taylor Swift Eras Tour ticketing meltdown, which led to a Senate hearing.
It also comes amid a secondary ticketing consultation in the UK with the government pledging to make it fairer for genuine fans.
“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,” said FTC chairman Andrew N Ferguson. “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 favourite 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 a statement, the National Independent Talent Organisation (NITO), the trade organization for US independent booking agents and managers, said: "Without commenting on the specific charges, NITO 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."
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