The FTC is probing whether Live Nation’s Ticketmaster has done enough to prevent illegal ticket resales by bots on its platform. Ticket bots are a constant plague on consumers simply hoping to buy event and concert tickets.
Bloomberg reports that the FTC has launched an investigation into Ticketmaster, focusing on the company’s compliance with a law designed to prevent automated ticket resales. According to people familiar with the matter, the probe is at an advanced stage, and a decision on whether to bring a case against the ticket sales giant could be made within weeks. A settlement is also a possible outcome.
Ticketmaster, owned by Live Nation Inc., could face billions of dollars in penalties if a case is brought and the company loses, as the law allows for potential fines of $53,000 per violation. The scrutiny began under former FTC Chair Lina Khan’s tenure but has gained momentum during the Trump administration.
The FTC has enforcement authority over online ticket sales under the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, or BOTS Act, which was passed in 2016. The act aims to prevent large-scale ticket scalping by banning the use of bots or automated methods to circumvent per-person ticket limits for popular events. The FTC has intensified its scrutiny of ticket sales under the Trump administration, following a White House executive order in March that directed the agency to prioritize enforcement of the BOTS Act.
Breitbart News previously reported that the Trump administration was picking up steam towards investigating Ticketmaster:
Now, instead of cracking down on bots like Trump has demanded, Ticketmaster is lobbying for a new scheme that critics say would kill off its competition and tighten its monopoly.
In March, President Trump signed an executive order directing Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to to clean up the live event marketplace and go after the bots that cheat consumers out of buying tickets. But rather than pledge to fix the problem on its own platform, Ticketmaster floated the idea of government-imposed price caps on resale tickets.
Trump allies called the company’s plan a blatant power grab that would crush Ticketmaster’s rivals and leave fans getting ripped off worse than ever.
Ticketmaster has long been a target of criticism from fans, artists, regulators, and lawmakers, with frustrations reaching a boiling point in 2022 when tens of thousands of fans were unable to complete their orders for tickets to Taylor Swift’s shows. The bot probe accelerated following this debacle, with FTC investigators looking into whether the company has a financial incentive to allow resellers to circumvent its rules on ticket limits.
In response to the investigation, Ticketmaster denied violating the law and stated that it would “vigorously defend any such claims.” The company also said it believes the FTC has a “fundamental misunderstanding” of its policies and is taking an “excessively expansionist view” of the BOTS Act. Ticketmaster claims to have invested more in stopping scalpers than the rest of the industry combined.
An FTC lawsuit over ticket-scalping bots would compound Ticketmaster’s legal troubles. The company is already facing a lawsuit from the DOJ and dozens of state attorneys general seeking to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, with a trial scheduled for March. The Justice Department also has an ongoing criminal antitrust probe into whether the company colluded with rivals at the onset of the pandemic over refund policies for canceled concerts.
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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