The FTC is suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster over ‘illegal ticket resale’ practices
By Jordan Valinsky, CNN
New York (CNN) — The United States federal government and seven states are suing Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, for failing to crack down on ticket resellers, which is forcing customers to “pay substantially more than face value” for popular concerts and and events.
The Federal Trade Commission leveled a litany of accusations against Live Nation in its press release Thursday, including “bait-and-switch pricing,” where consumers often pay more than advertised, and said claims that the company imposes “strict limits” on ticket purchases are false since “ticket brokers routinely and substantially exceeded those limits.”
Shares of Live Nation (LYV) dropped more than 2% in midday trading. The company didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
“American live entertainment is the best in the world and should be accessible to all of us,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a release. “It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician’s show.”
Ticketmaster dominates the market, controlling ticketing for about 80% of major venues in the United States. Consumers spent nearly $83 billion buying tickets from the company between 2019 to 2024, the FTC said.
The FTC also took aim at the company’s fees. The agency said that fees are often hidden and not shown until the end of the purchase, and they can be as much as 44% of the final cost of the ticket. Ticketmaster has collected $16 billion in fees from 2019 to 2024.
The FTC claims that Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s practices violates an executive order signed during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2016, called the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, a law that allows the agency to take action against individuals and companies that use bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and resell them.
Trump signed a similar order in March, a few months into his second term. Trump said at the time that he hadn’t known much about price gouging, “but I checked it out, and it is a big problem.”
The issue of price gouging drew heightened attention during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2022, when resale prices hit tens of thousands of dollars. The sky-high prices caused fierce backlash against Ticketmaster, the country’s biggest ticketing website and concert promoter, from lawmakers who accused the company of acting as a monopoly.
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