Live Nation and Ticketmaster want a judge to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit claiming the companies have enabled scalpers to jack up concert prices, calling it an “unprecedented” use of federal ticketing laws.
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The FTC sued the live giants last year, claiming they had engaged in years of “unfair and deceptive practices” that hurt consumers, including allowing brokers to buy up tickets and resell them at sky-high prices. The case came as spiking prices have rankled fans during a post-pandemic concert boom.
But in a motion filed Tuesday in federal court, Live Nation and Ticketmaster called the FTC’s case an “egregious instance of agency overreach” that should be tossed out of court immediately. In doing so, they accused the feds of misusing the BOTS Act, a 2016 law aimed at quashing scalping, in ways unintended by the lawmakers who wrote it.
“This statute is designed to help ticket issuers like Ticketmaster combat ticket harvesting and scalping, ensuring that tickets are accessible to genuine fans,” the company’s lawyers write. “Plaintiffs now ask this court to take the unprecedented step of applying this law against a ticket issuer for its operation of a resale platform.”
A spokeswoman for the FTC declined to comment on Live Nation’s motion.
With Live Nation and Ticketmaster already facing a blockbuster monopoly lawsuit from the Justice Department, the FTC filed its own separate case in September — accusing the companies of costing consumers billions in inflated ticket prices. The agency claimed they were “tacitly coordinating” with ticket brokers by allowing them to “harvest” millions worth of tickets despite public rules against it.
“American live entertainment is the best in the world and should be accessible to all of us,” FTC chairman Andrew N. Ferguson wrote at the time. “It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician’s show.”
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The case was aimed at a common gripe from music fans, who have seen ticket prices skyrocket as live music has boomed in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered venues. Though Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was the poster child for infamously expensive resale tickets — fans routinely paid five-figure sums for some tickets — prices have risen across the board. According to Billboard Boxscore, the average ticket price for a stadium show in North America has risen from $101.77 in 2016 to $150.94 in 2024, for example.
But in their motion on Tuesday, attorneys for Live Nation and Ticketmaster say the BOTS Act was simply not intended to target ticket-selling platforms. The statute — formally the Better Online Ticket Sales Act — was aimed at cracking down on scalpers themselves, the companies’ lawyers write, and the FTC “cannot rewrite that statute through this litigation.”
“Plaintiffs’ theory boils down to the idea that Ticketmaster is liable under the BOTS Act merely for knowing that some brokers used multiple accounts or that some accounts possessed more tickets than the ticket limit permitted,” Live Nation’s lawyers write. “But that theory does not amount to a violation of the statute Congress enacted.”
The companies also argue that the FTC’s other allegations — including that Live Nation and Ticketmaster employed “bait-and-switch pricing” by tacking deceptive fees onto low advertised prices — were “equally deficient” because they now employ all-in pricing that discloses fees.
Despite its strong denial of any legal wrongdoing, Live Nation has announced major policy changes in the wake of the FTC’s lawsuit. In an October letter to Congress, the company told lawmakers that it plans to bar brokers from operating multiple accounts on its platform, shutter a long-criticized uploading application, and start requiring brokers to hand over Social Security numbers to sell tickets.
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