By Jody Godoy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and seven states accused Live Nation and its ticketing arm Ticketmaster of costing fans millions of dollars by tacitly allowing ticket brokers to scoop concert tickets and sell them to at a significant markup, the agency said on Thursday.
The lawsuit deepens Ticketmaster’s legal woes, which began after its botched 2022 sale of tickets to Swift’s much-hyped Eras tour.
Live Nation shares were trading down 2.3% on the news.
Ticketmaster, which controls 80% of primary ticketing for major concert venues, ignored brokers’ violations of ticket purchasing limits set by artists, allowing Ticketmaster to reap $3.7 billion in resale fees between 2019 and 2024, the FTC alleged.
Those actions along with Ticketmaster’s failure to disclose the full price of tickets, including fees, upfront violated consumer protection law, the agency said.
Representatives for Ticketmaster and Live Nation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“The Trump-Vance FTC is working hard to ensure that fans have a shot at buying fair-priced tickets, and today’s lawsuit is a monumental step in that direction,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement.
Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia are jointly filing the lawsuit in California.
Ticketmaster faced intense criticism when billions of requests from Swift fans, bots and ticket resellers overwhelmed its website and the company canceled a planned ticket sale to the general public.
Ticketmaster has known since 2018 that resellers violate its policies, the FTC said in its lawsuit on Thursday. The agency cited an internal email from a Ticketmaster executive that copied Live Nation leadership stating that the companies “turn a blind eye as a matter of policy” to the violations.
The Department of Justice sued in 2024 to seek a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, accusing them of monopolizing markets across the live concert industry. The companies have denied the allegations.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington and Jody Godoy in New York; editing by Susan Heavey, Franklin Paul and Aurora Ellis)
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