The lawsuit, filed within the U.S. District Courtroom for the Central District of California, accuses Ticketmaster and Stay Nation — the biggest ticketing and dwell leisure firm within the nation — of taking part in three major unlawful practices.
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The Federal Commerce Fee filed a lawsuit in opposition to Ticketmaster and its dad or mum firm, Stay Nation, on Thursday, alleging that the corporate willingly misleads shoppers about ticket costs and cooperates with scalpers to markup resale costs — all on the expense of artists and music followers. Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia are all plaintiffs within the FTC’s complaints.
“American dwell leisure is one of the best on this planet and needs to be accessible to all of us,” stated FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson in a press release. “It mustn’t value an arm and a leg to take the household to a baseball sport or attend your favourite musician’s present.”
The lawsuit, filed within the U.S. District Courtroom for the Central District of California, accuses Ticketmaster and Stay Nation — the biggest ticketing and dwell leisure firm within the nation — of taking part in three major unlawful practices.
First, the FTC alleges that Ticketmaster engages in a “bait and swap strategy,” which means they submit ticket costs at deceptively low costs that then enhance by 30% or extra throughout checkout because of further charges. The criticism alleges that Ticketmaster has “reaped huge income by misrepresenting the entire value of tickets to shoppers, who pay billions of {dollars} annually in necessary charges not mirrored within the record value.”
Though artists set costs and limits for what number of tickets every consumer should buy in an try to make the method extra accessible for followers, the FTC additionally alleges that Ticketmaster knowingly permits scalpers to exceed these limits. In keeping with the lawsuit, “brokers” are capable of buy hundreds of tickets to a single occasion after which resell them on Ticketmaster’s secondary marketplace for considerably greater costs. The FTC says that is potential as a result of Ticketmaster and Stay Nation “knowingly permit, and in reality even encourage, brokers to make use of a number of Ticketmaster accounts to bypass Ticketmaster’s personal safety measures and entry management Techniques,” which is a direct violation of the Higher On-line Ticket Gross sales Act.
Whereas Ticketmaster has argued that scalpers and bots are the rationale followers miss out on face worth tickets within the first place, the FTC claims Ticketmaster is knowingly benefitting from this technique by “triple dipping” on charges — first when scalpers purchase them within the major market, adopted by once they record them on the resale market, and eventually when followers purchase them secondhand. The FTC estimates that Ticketmaster has charged $3.7 billion in charges on resale tickets from 2019 by means of 2024.
Stay Nation and Ticketmaster haven’t responded to NPR’s requests for remark.
The FTC criticism follows an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Division of Justice and 30 states in 2024 to interrupt up Ticketmaster and Stay Nation, citing considerations that an unlawful monopoly over ticketing, promotion, venue possession and administration may drive up ticket costs.
“The DOJ’s lawsuit will not decrease ticket costs for followers or tackle the problems they care about—service charges and entry to in-demand reveals,” Stay Nation stated in a press release to NPR earlier this 12 months. “The true drawback is the secondary market the place resellers drive up costs and siphon billions out of the business, hurting each artists and followers.”
Final August, the UK’s Competitors and Market Authority launched an investigation into Ticketmaster’s use of dynamic pricing for Oasis reunion ticket gross sales. In 2022, Taylor Swift followers filed a lawsuit in opposition to Ticketmaster and Stay Nation accusing the businesses of value gouging tickets for the Eras Tour.
