FTC sues Live Nation and Ticketmaster over scalping profits
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched legal action against concert giant Live Nation and its ticketing subsidiary, Ticketmaster, accusing them of profiting from ticket scalpers who exploit their own platform.
The complaint, filed on Thursday in the US District Court for the Central District of California, claims the companies have long turned a blind eye to mass ticket purchases by professional brokers, allowing them to bypass restrictions designed to protect consumers.
The lawsuit says Ticketmaster then benefited financially when those tickets were resold at inflated prices on its secondary market.
Seven state attorneys general – from Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia — are backing the FTC’s case. The FTC alleges that Ticketmaster has a financial incentive to allow scalpers to operate.
The company, it says, can “triple dip” on fees — first charging brokers when they buy tickets on the primary market, charging again when those tickets are listed on Ticketmaster’s resale marketplace, and finally charging consumers when they make a purchase.
According to the complaint, Ticketmaster “maintains in public that its business model is at odds with brokers that routinely exceed ticket limits,” but in private has “acknowledged that their business model and bottom line benefit from brokers preventing ordinary Americans from purchasing tickets to the shows they want to see at the prices artists set.”
Alleged collusion with scalpers
The regulator claims that while Live Nation publicly emphasises ticket purchase limits — and says artists have control over them – internally, the company has “tacitly worked with those very same scalpers”.
One internal review cited by the FTC found that in 2018, five brokers controlled more than 6,300 Ticketmaster accounts and collectively held over 246,000 tickets for nearly 2,600 events.
The lawsuit accuses the company of knowing about such violations for years but failing to act, effectively enabling the practice in exchange for higher revenues. The FTC also argues that Ticketmaster has deceived customers over pricing.
It alleges that consumers are often shown deceptively low upfront prices, only to face significant mark-ups at the checkout stage.
While Live Nation introduced “all-in” pricing at its owned venues in 2023 — displaying the full cost excluding taxes from the start of the purchasing process — the complaint says that “over the last decade, the first price the consumer has seen on Ticketmaster’s platform has almost never been the price the consumer pays”.
Between 2019 and 2024, US consumers paid more than $16.4bn in fees to Ticketmaster, the regulator said. Fees typically account for 24% to 44% of the total ticket price.
The lawsuit comes just months after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a separate case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster, accusing them of monopolising the live entertainment industry.
That action — one of the most significant antitrust lawsuits in years — seeks to break up the company, undoing the 2010 merger that first brought Live Nation and Ticketmaster under one roof. The DOJ alleges the firm has used its dominance to stifle competition, restrict rival promoters and ticketing companies, and lock venues into exclusive deals.
Together, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are estimated to control about 80% of ticketing for major concert venues in the US, as well as an increasing share of ticket resales.
Growing pressure
The companies have faced mounting criticism in recent years from politicians, consumer groups and fans over high prices, hidden fees and limited availability of tickets.
High-profile controversies — including the botched presale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2022, which left millions of fans unable to buy tickets — have fuelled calls for tougher oversight of the ticketing industry.
Live Nation has previously defended its business practices and pointed to issues such as high demand and bots operated by third parties as contributing factors.
It has yet to respond publicly to the FTC’s latest lawsuit.
