FTC sues Stay Nation and Ticketmaster alleging unlawful resale ways : NPR

The Federal Commerce Fee filed a lawsuit towards 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 reside leisure is one of the best on the planet and must be accessible to all of us,” stated FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson in an announcement. “It shouldn’t price 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 Court docket for the Central District of California, accuses Ticketmaster and Stay Nation — the most important ticketing and reside leisure firm within the nation — of taking part in three major unlawful practices.

First, the FTC alleges that Ticketmaster engages in a “bait and change strategy,” which means they submit ticket costs at deceptively low costs that then improve by 30% or extra throughout checkout resulting from further charges. The criticism alleges that Ticketmaster has “reaped huge income by misrepresenting the entire worth of tickets to shoppers, who pay billions of {dollars} every year in necessary charges not mirrored within the record worth.”

Though artists set costs and limits for what number of tickets every consumer should purchase in an try and make the method extra accessible for followers, the FTC additionally alleges that Ticketmaster knowingly permits scalpers to exceed these limits. In line 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 enable, 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 explanation followers miss out on face worth tickets within the first place, the FTC claims Ticketmaster is knowingly benefitting from this method 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 at last when followers purchase them secondhand. The FTC estimates that Ticketmaster has charged $3.7 billion in charges on resale tickets from 2019 by way 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 issues 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 an announcement to NPR earlier this yr. “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 towards Ticketmaster and Stay Nation accusing the businesses of worth gouging tickets for the Eras Tour.