FTC Sues Ticketmaster for Working With Scalpers and Inflating Prices

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and seven states started legal proceedings against Live Nation and Ticketmaster accusing them of having used scalpers to inflate ticket prices and deceive both fans and artists.

The complaint alleges that Ticketmaster “tacitly coordinating with brokers and allowing them to harvest millions of dollars worth of tickets in the primary market.” Those tickets were then resold at high markups, with Ticketmaster profiting from extra fees on its own resale platform. The FTC says this practice cost customers “billions in inflated prices and additional fees.”

FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said, “American live entertainment is the best in the world and should be accessible to all of us. It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician’s show.”

According to court records, Ticketmaster employees admitted internally that turning a “blind eye” to brokers became “a matter of policy.” One review found five major brokers controlled thousands of fake accounts, buying hundreds of thousands of tickets. A single broker operated more than 13,000 accounts from 2020 to 2024 to evade account restrictions, as reported by ArsTechnica.

Ticketmaster reportedly gave IT support to ticket scalpers instead of stopping their operations. Indeed, the TradeDesk software system provided brokers with a single platform to handle tickets from various accounts. In one case, an executive admitted that deploying stronger security was avoided because it was “too effective.”

Ticketmaster faces legal action because their system practices “bait-and-switch” pricing which conceals fees that can amount to 44% of ticket prices until customers reach the checkout stage. The fees generated between 2019 and 2024 added up to $16.4 billion.

The FTC victory would impose major civil penalties on Ticketmaster and Live Nation while also limiting their business activities. Seven states including Florida and Illinois and Virginia have joined the case.