The lawsuit, filed within the U.S. District Court docket for the Central District of California, accuses Ticketmaster and Stay Nation — the biggest ticketing and reside leisure firm within the nation — of taking part in three foremost unlawful practices.
NurPhoto/NurPhoto by way of Getty Photographs/NurPhoto
cover caption
toggle caption
NurPhoto/NurPhoto by way of Getty Photographs/NurPhoto
The Federal Commerce Fee filed a lawsuit in opposition to Ticketmaster and its mum or dad firm, Stay Nation, on Thursday, alleging that the corporate willingly misleads customers about ticket costs and cooperates with scalpers to markup resale costs — all on the expense of artists and music followers. Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia are all plaintiffs within the FTC’s complaints.
“American reside leisure is the most effective on the earth and needs to be accessible to all of us,” mentioned FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson in a press release. “It shouldn’t value an arm and a leg to take the household to a baseball sport or attend your favourite musician’s present.”
The lawsuit, filed within the U.S. District Court docket for the Central District of California, accuses Ticketmaster and Stay Nation — the biggest ticketing and reside leisure firm within the nation — of taking part in three foremost unlawful practices.
First, the FTC alleges that Ticketmaster engages in a “bait and swap strategy,” that means they put up ticket costs at deceptively low costs that then improve by 30% or extra throughout checkout attributable to extra charges. The criticism alleges that Ticketmaster has “reaped huge earnings by misrepresenting the full worth of tickets to customers, who pay billions of {dollars} annually in necessary charges not mirrored within the record worth.”
Though artists set costs and limits for what number of tickets every consumer should purchase in an try and make the method extra accessible for followers, the FTC additionally alleges that Ticketmaster knowingly permits scalpers to exceed these limits. In response to the lawsuit, “brokers” are in a position to buy hundreds of tickets to a single occasion after which resell them on Ticketmaster’s secondary marketplace for considerably increased costs. The FTC says that is attainable as a result of Ticketmaster and Stay Nation “knowingly enable, and actually even encourage, brokers to make use of a number of Ticketmaster accounts to avoid Ticketmaster’s personal safety measures and entry management Programs,” which is a direct violation of the Higher On-line Ticket Gross sales Act.
Whereas Ticketmaster has argued that scalpers and bots are the rationale followers miss out on face worth tickets within the first place, the FTC claims Ticketmaster is knowingly benefitting from this method by “triple dipping” on charges — first when scalpers purchase them within the major market, adopted by once they record them on the resale market, and at last when followers purchase them secondhand. The FTC estimates that Ticketmaster has charged $3.7 billion in charges on resale tickets from 2019 by 2024.
Stay Nation and Ticketmaster haven’t responded to NPR’s requests for remark.
The FTC criticism follows an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Division of Justice and 30 states in 2024 to interrupt up Ticketmaster and Stay Nation, citing issues that an unlawful monopoly over ticketing, promotion, venue possession and administration may drive up ticket costs.
“The DOJ’s lawsuit will not decrease ticket costs for followers or deal with the problems they care about—service charges and entry to in-demand reveals,” Stay Nation mentioned in a press release to NPR earlier this 12 months. “The actual downside is the secondary market the place resellers drive up costs and siphon billions out of the trade, hurting each artists and followers.”
Final August, the UK’s Competitors and Market Authority launched an investigation into Ticketmaster’s use of dynamic pricing for Oasis reunion ticket gross sales. In 2022, Taylor Swift followers filed a lawsuit in opposition to Ticketmaster and Stay Nation accusing the businesses of worth gouging tickets for the Eras Tour.
