In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Live Nation and Ticketmaster of deceptive pricing and, more seriously, of effectively colluding with scalpers to keep ticket prices artificially high.
“In public, defendants profess to prioritize ‘[g]etting tickets into the hands of fans, at prices set by the artist,’” the 84-page lawsuit, filed Thursday in California’s Central District Court, states. “Defendants also claim that ticket scalpers and ‘big resale sites’ are to blame for the resale tickets that defendants sell for substantially more than the face value of the ticket. In private, however, defendants have tacitly worked with those very same scalpers, allowing them to unlawfully purchase millions of dollars in tickets in the primary market, so that defendants can extract more profit for themselves when reselling those tickets on the secondary market.”
It added that the alleged price gouging frustrates artists’ desire to maintain affordable ticket prices that fit the needs of ordinary American families.”
“When consumers have searched for event tickets on Ticketmaster, defendants have displayed a list price in the search results that does not reflect the actual cost to consumers at checkout,” the complaint reads.
Back in May 2024, the U.S. government sued Live Nation for allegedly dominating the live entertainment ticketing industry.
At the time, Live Nation called the Department of Justice’s claims “baseless,” per CNN.
“The DOJ’s lawsuit won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows,” Live Nation said in a statement to the news channel. “Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment.”
But the FTC mentions Live Nation’s alleged monopoly as well in the Thursday lawsuit.
“Ticketmaster dwarfs its competitors,” the lawsuit states. “The company controls roughly 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing for concerts and a growing share of ticket resales in the secondary market. From 2019 to 2024 alone, consumers spent more than $82.6 billion purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster.”
The legal move comes just a month after the FTC went after a Maryland ticket resale company Key Investment Group for allegedly snatching up hundreds of thousands of seats at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and other major concerts in 2022 and 2023. The complaint accused Key Investment of violating the Better Online Ticket Sales Act by using deceptive tactics to bypass Ticketmaster limits. Federal regulators say the company created thousands of fake accounts and IP addresses, SIM banks and virtual credit cards to secure nearly 380,000 tickets between November 2022 and December 2023.
The FTC accuses Live Nation and Ticketmaster of violating the Better Online Ticket Sales Act is seeking permanent injunction, monetary relief, civil penalties, and other relief.
