The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general representing seven states including Illinois filed a lawsuit Thursday against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, alleging that the companies unlawfully coordinated with ticket brokers.
The lawsuit alleges that Ticketmaster allows brokers to buy tickets in bulk, despite rules the company adopted to limit the number of tickets one user can buy, so that both brokers and Ticketmaster can pocket extra profits when tickets are resold. For example, one broker purchased 772 tickets to a 2023 Coldplay concert for about $81,000 and then resold the same tickets for over $170,000, the complaint stated.
“Ticketmaster’s deceptive business tactics have left fans paying steep hidden fees and pushed them into expensive, secondary ticket markets,” said Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
Ticket limits and prices on Ticketmaster’s website are typically set by the artists. However, in the complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the FTC and state attorneys general allege that Live Nation and Ticketmaster control about 80% of concert venues’ ticket sales nationally and tacitly allowed brokers to buy tickets in bulk. From 2019 to 2024, consumers spent more than $82.6 billion purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster.
The lawsuit also alleges that Ticketmaster routinely advertises lower ticket prices and then tacks on mandatory fees, increasing costs at check out. These fees can be as high as 44% of the ticket’s cost, the FTC said in a release. Between 2019 and 2024, the fees totaled $16.4 billion.
In the complaint, the FTC alleges that Ticketmaster is aware that brokers create thousands of Ticketmaster accounts to purchase tickets. In an internal email where members of Live Nation leadership were copied, a senior Ticketmaster executive admitted that the companies “turn a blind eye as a matter of policy” to brokers’ violations of posted ticket limits, the complaint stated. For example, an internal review by the company showed that just five brokers controlled 6,345 Ticketmaster accounts and possessed 246,407 concert tickets to 2,594 events.
The complaint also alleges that Ticketmaster and Live Nation make resales easier for brokers by allowing them to track and aggregate tickets purchased from multiple Ticketmaster accounts through a software platform called TradeDesk. Through TradeDesk, Ticketmaster is able to see which high-volume brokers are exceeding their ticket limit policy.
Representatives for LiveNation and Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In May 2024, the Justice Department and several states including Illinois filed a lawsuit accusing Live Nation of monopolizing the ticketing industry by making venues enter exclusive contracts. This March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order saying that the online ticketing industry was “blighted by unscrupulous middlemen who sit at the intersection between artists and fans and impose egregious fees while providing minimal value.” The executive order encouraged the FTC to enforce competition laws to address the industry’s issues.
In addition to Raoul and the FTC, the attorneys general of Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia joined in filing Thursday’s lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster.