FTC Sues Live Nation Over Ticket Resale Practices

FTC sues Live Nation over illegal ticket resale practices. The Live Nation app arranged on a smartphone. (Gabby Jones/Bloomberg)

Key Points

About This Summary

• The FTC and seven states are suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster for allegedly working with brokers to inflate ticket prices.
• The lawsuit alleges Ticketmaster knowingly allowed brokers to bypass ticket limits, profiting from mark-ups in the secondary market.
• Ticketmaster is also accused of concealing mandatory fees, which totaled $16.4 billion between 2019 and 2024, until late in transactions.

The Federal Trade Commission and seven states sued Live Nation Entertainment and its ticketing subsidiary, Ticketmaster, accusing the companies of working with brokers to harvest large quantities of event tickets and then resell them at substantial mark-ups, forcing consumers to pay “significantly” higher prices.

In an 84-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Central California, the FTC and the attorneys general from Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia accuse Ticketmaster and its parent company of working to deceive and profit from buyers.

The practice prevents “ordinary Americans from purchasing tickets to the shows they want to see at the prices artists set,” the lawsuit says.

Ticketmaster is the largest provider of concert tickets, controlling 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing, and also has a growing share of ticket resales in the secondary market, the FTC said. From 2019 to 2024, consumers spent more than $82.6 billion buying tickets from Ticketmaster.

The Trump administration took aim at the events industry in March, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at protecting consumers, said FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson in a statement on Thursday.

“It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician’s show,” Ferguson said.

A Live Nation representative wasn’t immediately available to comment.

Live Nation stock closed 2.8% lower on Thursday.

The lawsuit cites an internal email from a senior Ticketmaster executive copied to Live Nation leadership that says the companies “turn a blind eye as a matter of policy” to brokers’ violations of posted ticket limits. For example, an internal review showed that five brokers controlled 6,345 Ticketmaster accounts and possessed 246,407 concert tickets to 2,594 events.

While publicly saying they prioritize getting tickets to fans and blaming ticket scalpers and resale sites for high ticket prices, the companies privately “worked with those very same scalpers, allowing them to unlawfully purchase millions of dollars in tickets in the primary market, so that Defendants can extract more profit for themselves when reselling those tickets on the secondary market,” the complaint said.

The companies not only knew about the deceptive practices, but have also “consistently declined to deploy additional technology that would more effectively prevent brokers from evading ticket limits because such tactics would decrease their revenue,” the complaint said, citing internal company documents.

The FTC also raised the issue of ticket prices, saying that Ticketmaster failed to disclose mandatory fees that were as high as 44% of ticket costs until the very end of a transaction. The lawsuit quotes Ticketmaster’s president telling Ticketmaster and Live Nation executives in 2022 that “Until we have ALL IN pricing … the sticker shock at the end is the problem.”

Company executives acknowledged internally that approach after their internal research showed that consumers were “less likely to purchase tickets when they are informed of the true cost upfront,” according to the complaint. Those fees totaled $16.4 billion from 2019 to 2024.

In one example cited in the lawsuit, a consumer looking to buy two $245 tickets to Bad Bunny’s Most Wanted Tour at Chicago’s United Center on March 28 was ultimately charged $662.21, or 23% higher than the list price. The increase included $60.96 in tax, and $111.04 in mandatory fees (a $45.20 service fee per ticket, a $6.00 facility charge, and an order processing fee of $8.85).

In addition to offering buyers additional services such as parking, insurance, and various VIP experiences, Ticketmaster’s site also features a purchase countdown clock that gives users little time to review the material on the page before making a purchase.

“And for highly sought-after events, where available tickets are snatched up at breakneck speed, consumers have risked losing the chance to buy any tickets at all if they chose not to complete the transaction after seeing the actual price,” the complaint said.

Although the “face value” of tickets on the primary market is set by the performing artist, Ticketmaster adds and profits from several mandatory fees through its website or app, including service fees, facility fees, and order-processing fees. Consumers cannot buy tickets from Ticketmaster without paying those fees, and collectively paid $16.4 billion in mandatory fees on tickets bought from Ticketmaster from 2019 to 2024, the lawsuit said.

Ticketmaster also gets a percentage of tickets resold on its site or app, called a “seller fee,” as well as markups on those ticket prices. The companies collected $986 million in sellers’ fees and $187 million in markups between 2019 and 2024.

“Despite public claims championing price transparency and
internal recognition that consumers are misled by “bait and switch” tactics that result in ‘sticker shock,’” the companies for years repeatedly chose to use displays that “induced consumers to select tickets based on a lower advertised price than what Ticketmaster ultimately charges,” the lawsuit says.

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 agency is seeking civil penalties and monetary relief.

Write to Janet H. Cho at janet.cho@dowjones.com