Judge Rules Ticketmaster Will Face Federal Trade Commission Ticket Resale Lawsuit

Yesterday (Monday, September 28), Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong cleared the way for the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) lawsuit against Ticketmaster, alleging the ticket marketplace has rigged its reseller platform for profit. Ticketmaster filed a motion to dismiss, but the judge ordered that the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act applied as such, so that the FTC may proceed with the suit.

The details:

• The FTC claims that Ticketmaster permitted brokers to buy unlimited tickets by creating thousands of fake accounts.

• This would in turn create significant resale fees on Ticketmaster’s secondary market platform that come back to Ticketmaster's coffers.

• Frimpong added that the FTC can accuse Ticketmaster of “drip pricing,” which is when additional fees are added at checkout.

What they said:

• Frimpong: “Upon identifying violators, Live Nation and Ticketmaster could have implemented measures to curtail continuing violations of ticket purchase limits. However, the FTC maintains that Live Nation and Ticketmaster ‘have reduced, discontinued, or declined to implement the use of tools that could effectively enforce ticket limits against brokers,’ thereby enabling circumvention. Thus, the complaint illustrates that Live Nation and Ticketmaster had knowledge of the violations, had the opportunity and means to counter the violations, but elected to allow scalpers and brokers to bypass ticket purchase limits.”