Ticketmaster again

 

The government is mad at Ticketmaster again

Anna Kim

One thing uniting this country is disdain for how expensive it is to see Lady Gaga: Two administrations in a row have now sued Ticketmaster. The FTC and seven states sued Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation yesterday over its resale practices, accusing the company of being weak on scalpers in order to profit off of ticket reselling. The lawsuit alleges that despite publicly rolling out security measures that limit the amount of tickets individuals can buy, Ticketmaster lets resellers create thousands of accounts. The suit contends that the company then reaps another round of fees from sellers and buyers on its resale platform after collecting on the tickets’ initial purchase. The complaint says an internal review by the company showed that just five brokers owned 6,345 Ticketmaster accounts that held 246,407 tickets. Ticketmaster collected $11 billion in fees on ticket sales from 2019 to 2024, with nearly $3.7 billion of that coming from resold tickets, according to the FTC. Live Nation and Ticketmaster haven’t publicly responded to the lawsuit. Ticketmaster’s legal team is busy: Last year, the DOJ under the Biden administration filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, which owns as much as 80% of the primary ticket sale market, saying that the live entertainment behemoth must break up. That suit remains ongoing.—MM