The Federal Commerce Fee and state prosecutors on Thursday filed a joint lawsuit in opposition to Reside Nation Leisure and Ticketmaster accusing the occasion companies of permitting brokers to scoop up occasion tickets and resell them at inflated costs, costing shoppers billions of {dollars}.
In a authorized criticism filed within the U.S. District Courtroom for the Central District of California, the regulatory company additionally alleged that Reside Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, used “bait-and-switch pricing” techniques by promoting decrease ticket costs than what was really out there to clients, and by promoting hundreds of thousands of tickets to brokers— usually at a big markup — regardless of limits that artists had positioned on such gross sales.
“The FTC alleges that in public, Ticketmaster maintains that its enterprise mannequin is at odds with brokers that routinely exceed ticket limits,” the company mentioned in a information launch. “However in personal, Ticketmaster acknowledged that its enterprise mannequin and backside line profit from brokers stopping peculiar Individuals from buying tickets to the exhibits they need to see on the costs artists set.”
The company mentioned Reside Nation’s and Ticketmaster’s enterprise practices violate the Higher On-line Ticket Gross sales Act and different legal guidelines barring misleading gross sales techniques.
Becoming a member of the FTC go well with had been attorneys normal in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.
“It shouldn’t value an arm and a leg to take the household to a baseball recreation or attend your favourite musician’s present,” FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson mentioned in a assertion.
From 2019 to 2024, shoppers spent almost $83 billion shopping for tickets by Ticketmaster, the FTC mentioned. The platform controls at the very least 80% of the tickets offered by main occasion venues, in response to the company.
Reside Nation, primarily based in Beverly Hills, Calif., and Ticketmaster did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
In Might, the Division of Justice filed a federal lawsuit accusing the 2 firms of illegally monopolizing the reside leisure trade. The go well with alleged that Reside Nation has violated antitrust legal guidelines in ways in which harm shoppers, partly by its possession of Ticketmaster.
Reside Nation purchased Ticketmaster in 2009.
