FTC Sues Ticketmaster, Live Nation for Illegal Ticket Resales and Deceptive Pricing

How a long-simmering fight over “junk fees,” scalpers, and market power finally boiled over—and what it could mean for fans, artists, and the $30-plus-billion live events economy.

On a Thursday afternoon in mid-September, federal regulators finally said the quiet part out loud: Ticketmaster and its parent Live Nation didn’t merely fail to stop scalpers—they allegedly profited from them. In a sweeping complaint filed with seven state attorneys general, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused the live-events giant of colluding with ticket brokers to hoard tickets, resell them at hefty markups on its own platform, and hide price-inflating fees until the last click. The agency says those practices violated the FTC Act, the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, and the FTC’s 2024 rule banning certain hidden “junk fees.”

The case lands amid a once-in-a-generation legal pincer movement around Live Nation–Ticketmaster: a separate Justice Department (DOJ) antitrust suit seeking to break up the company was filed in 2024, alleging it “suffocates” competition across concerts, venues, and ticketing. Together, the two actions challenge both how tickets are sold and who controls the marketplace.

What Exactly the FTC Alleges

The FTC’s complaint sketches three pillars of misconduct:

1. Illegal Resale Tactics With Brokers: Ticketmaster allegedly allowed—or looked the other way as—professional brokers created armies of accounts to bypass artist-imposed ticket limits, harvest inventory, and flip seats at multiples of face value on Ticketmaster’s own resale exchange. The complaint cites internal communications and a 2018 internal review showing a handful of brokers controlling thousands of accounts and hundreds of thousands of tickets. The agency claims Ticketmaster then took a cut on both the primary sale and the resale, creating a “double-dip” incentive to tolerate rule-breaking.

2. Deceptive “Bait-and-Switch” Pricing: Ticketmaster allegedly advertised a low price throughout most of the purchase flow, then piled on mandatory fees—sometimes amounting to as much as 44% of the ticket price—only at checkout. The FTC calls this a classic bait-and-switch that the agency’s “Junk Fees” rule was designed to prevent. Between 2019 and 2024, consumers paid an estimated $16.4 billion in fees on Ticketmaster purchases, according to figures cited in the complaint.

3. False Assurances About Ticket Limits and Anti-Bot Controls: The agency says Ticketmaster overstated the rigor of its limits and anti-bot tools, while brokers routinely exceeded them—sometimes with the company’s knowledge—undermining artists’ intent to keep prices accessible for real fans.

The raw scale is striking: the FTC and state partners say Americans spent more than $82.6 billion on Ticketmaster from 2019–2024; resale fees alone allegedly generated $3.7 billion for the company over that span.

How the Alleged Scheme Works

To understand the mechanics, you have to zoom in on a familiar frustration: you log on right at on-sale time, the show appears “sold out,” and minutes later comparable seats flood the resale exchange—often on the very same platform—at two, three, or four times the face price. Regulators allege this isn’t just chaos; it’s a system.

According to the complaint, brokers used elaborate workarounds—bulk accounts, device and IP rotation, automated scripts, even purchasing through “official” resale channels—to gobble inventory. The agency points to evidence that Ticketmaster long knew professional resellers were blowing past limits, including internal reviews and communications, yet allowed them to operate at scale. The company, the FTC says, then monetized those arbitrage opportunities by taking fees when brokers bought on the primary market and again when those seats were resold on Ticketmaster’s exchange.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because watchdogs and journalists have flagged versions of it before. A 2018 joint CBC/Toronto Star investigation reported that Ticketmaster’s “TradeDesk” tool was pitched to high-volume resellers, stoking fears that the platform tacitly accommodated scalpers. The FTC now alleges a version of that dynamic persisted and richly rewarded the platform.

The Legal Hooks: FTC Act, BOTS Act, and the “Junk Fees” Rule

FTC Act (Section 5): The core deception claim is old-school consumer protection: don’t mislead people about price. The agency argues that advertising a low “list price” and revealing large, unavoidable fees only at checkout is deceptive and unfair.

BOTS Act (2016): Congress banned tools and tactics that circumvent ticket limits. The FTC says Ticketmaster not only failed to stop such behavior but benefited from it, asserting the company allowed or tolerated resellers’ violations and profited from the resulting markups. The agency has been actively enforcing the BOTS Act—bringing cases against brokers as recently as August 2025.

FTC “Junk Fees” Rule (finalized Dec. 17, 2024; effective May 2025): The rule requires “all-in” pricing in live-event ticketing: sellers must display the total price, including mandatory fees, more prominently than any partial price. The complaint says Ticketmaster’s drip-pricing flouted that standard. (Industry-wide, the rule marks a crackdown on bait-and-switch tactics in tickets and lodging.)

Notably, the enforcement climate intensified in 2025. A March Executive Order directed the FTC and DOJ to prioritize unfair and anticompetitive practices in the live-entertainment market—explicitly calling for rigorous BOTS Act enforcement. The agencies soon sought public input for a joint report. The new suit is the most aggressive step yet.

Live Nation–Ticketmaster’s Response

Live Nation has long denied that it profits from bad actors or hides fees to trick customers. In coverage of the new case, the company rejected the allegations, arguing that bots and independent brokers are the real problem, and that the company supports “all-in pricing” and other transparency measures. (After White House pressure in 2023, Ticketmaster said it would roll out upfront pricing.) Expect Live Nation to argue that its resale marketplace actually improves safety and transparency versus off-platform gray markets—and that many fees are venue or promoter-driven.

How We Got Here: A Decade-Plus of Antitrust Smoke

There’s deep history behind this moment.

• 2010 Merger, 2019–2020 Extension: The DOJ allowed Live Nation to merge with Ticketmaster in 2010 under a consent decree barring retaliation against venues that used rival ticketers. After reports of violations, the DOJ extended and toughened that decree in 2019–2020—calling it the most significant enforcement action of an existing antitrust decree in two decades.

• Taylor Swift’s 2022 “Eras Tour” Meltdown: The fiasco—site crashes, canceled public on-sales, and astronomical resale prices—became a cultural touchpoint and galvanized lawmakers. Congressional hearings followed.

• 2024 DOJ Antitrust Suit: In May 2024, the DOJ and 30 states sued to break up Live Nation–Ticketmaster, alleging monopolization across the concert pipeline—promotion, venues, artist management, primary ticketing, and a growing slice of resale. The government says Ticketmaster handles ~80% of primary ticketing at major concert venues. That case is separate from—and now complemented by—the FTC’s new complaint focused on deception and illegal resales.

• Legislative and Regulatory Push: The House passed the bipartisan TICKET Act (2024 and again in 2025) to require all-in pricing and clearer disclosures; Senate versions are pending. The FTC’s own junk-fees rule now imposes similar transparency mandates nationwide.

The Market Context: “Funflation,” Record Tours, and a Booming (But Fractious) Secondary Market

The past two years delivered a post-pandemic touring bonanza—think Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Coldplay—pushing grosses to records. Pollstar clocked $9+ billion in 2023 global concert grosses, and 2024 stayed historically strong even with fewer stadium shows. Live Nation posted $23 billion in 2024 revenue (concert segment ~$19B), and Q2 2025 revenue rose 16% year over year, underscoring demand resilience.

Secondary platforms are big business in their own right. StubHub just went public at a roughly $9.3 billion valuation, while Vivid Seats reported $775.6 million in 2024 revenue on nearly $3.9 billion in marketplace gross order value—though 2025 has been choppy as competition and macro headwinds cooled volumes.

This is the economy into which the FTC just lobbed a grenade: a roaring live-events market where consumers love experiences but hate feeling gouged; artists want price integrity but face relentless arbitrage; and platforms straddle both supply and resale, often taking a cut each time a ticket trades hands. The alleged conflict is glaring: if a platform monetizes resale markups, it may have weaker incentives to eradicate the very behavior that inflates prices.

What “Deceptive Pricing” Looks Like to a Regulator

Price transparency isn’t just an aesthetic preference—it changes behavior. Economists have shown that drip pricing (revealing mandatory fees late) nudges consumers toward higher effective prices by anchoring attention to the initial number, then exploiting sunk time and scarcity pressure. That’s why the FTC’s rule requires the total price—face value plus unavoidable fees—to be the most prominent number the consumer sees. In ticketing, those fees can be sizable service and facility charges, order processing, and per-ticket fees that collectively add 20–40% or more to the headline price, according to the complaint.

Ticketmaster and some venues argue these fees fund real services (security, staffing, tech infrastructure) and that “all-in” displays risk sticker shock that reduces attendance. But regulators counter that any short-term demand effect is outweighed by fair competition on price. Notably, after a White House push in 2023, Live Nation and others announced all-in displays by default—an acknowledgement, at minimum, that the practice is feasible.

The Economics of “Double-Dipping” and Dynamic Pricing

Today’s ticket prices are set by dynamic algorithms that move prices toward market-clearing levels—much like airline fares. Artists and promoters increasingly embrace “platinum” and variable pricing to capture more of the consumer surplus that would otherwise flow to scalpers.

What the FTC targets is not dynamic pricing per se, but a platform allegedly capturing upside twice: fees on the initial sale and fees again on the resale, while tolerating (or facilitating) the very behavior that makes resale lucrative. That alleged misalignment—platform profits rising with scalper markups—creates an incentive to under-invest in anti-bot tools or enforcement of purchase limits, the FTC argues. The agency claims internal documents and years of consumer complaints show exactly that pattern.

From a welfare perspective, the harms span beyond the last-minute checkout shock:

• Consumer Surplus Loss: Drip pricing and scarce inventory push buyers into higher “effective” prices than they would’ve chosen in a transparent market.

• Price Discrimination Without Consent: Algorithmic pricing and resale arbitrage extract more from the most passionate fans while blunting artists’ ability to calibrate affordability.

• Entrenchment of Market Power: When the dominant firm controls primary, venue, and resale rails, rivals struggle to compete on experience or price—raising classic antitrust concerns already teed up in the DOJ case.

How the FTC Suit Interacts With the DOJ Breakup Case

Think of the DOJ case as structural (who owns what) and the FTC case as conduct (what they did and how they priced). The DOJ is asking a court to separate Ticketmaster from Live Nation—arguing the vertical stack forecloses rivals at venues and on tours. The FTC is seeking injunctions, penalties, and restitution around deceptive practices and illegal resales. Together, the cases could (1) force transparent, all-in pricing, (2) curtail or wall off resale operations, (3) mandate tougher anti-bot enforcement and audited ticket-limit controls, and (4) potentially unwind the business altogether if the DOJ prevails.

Layer on Congress’s TICKET Act—which would lock in all-in pricing and additional disclosures nationally—and you get a three-front push: courts, regulators, and legislators. As of September 2025, the House has passed versions twice; Senate action is pending.

Where the Industry Might Land

Even before a verdict, three shifts are likely:

1) All-In Pricing Becomes Standardized: The FTC rule already requires it; litigation will accelerate adoption across sellers (primary and secondary). Expect prominent totals and simplified fee line-items.

2) Resale Guardrails Tighten: Platforms could face consent decrees requiring independent monitoring of anti-bot systems, strict identity verification (one verified person, one account), and hard purchase caps enforced across devices, payment methods, and IPs. The FTC has been priming that pump with BOTS Act actions against brokers.

3) Functional Separation—or Exit—of Platform Resale: If regulators conclude that monetizing resale fundamentally conflicts with consumer protection, they could require ring-fencing (separate teams and incentives) or spinning off resale entirely. That would be more likely if the DOJ’s structural case gains traction.

Market Impact (So Far)

Live Nation’s stock dipped on the filing, reflecting headline risk and the non-trivial chance of operational remedies or damages. The bigger overhang is the DOJ case: even if the FTC suit settles on conduct remedies, a court-ordered breakup would reset industry economics.

Stock market information for Live Nation Entertainment Inc (LYV)

• Live Nation Entertainment Inc is a equity in the USA market.

• The price is 163.72 USD currently with a change of -1.00 USD (-0.01%) from the previous close.

• The latest open price was 164.09 USD and the intraday volume is 3822725.

• The intraday high is 165.0 USD and the intraday low is 161.44 USD.

• The latest trade time is Saturday, September 20, 03:15:00 +0400.

On the secondary side, StubHub’s public listing underscores investor appetite for ticket resale—even as enforcement clouds gather. Vivid Seats’ 2024 revenue growth shows the sector’s scale, but its choppy 2025 results hint at competitive and macro vulnerability if supply tightens and price practices standardize.

The Broader Debate: Competition, Transparency, and Consumer Rights

At stake is more than who pays a $25 “service fee.” The U.S. is testing how to govern digital marketplaces that both set the rules and profit from the play:

• Competition: If one company promotes tours, owns venues, runs primary ticketing, and takes a cut of resale, rivals can’t easily scale. The DOJ says that structure dampens innovation and elevates fees.

• Transparency: After years of public outrage—Eras Tour became the political catalyst—policymakers have converged on “all-in” pricing as table stakes. Whether fees are “venue” or “platform” fees matters less than whether consumers can compare true totals across sellers.

• Consumer Rights: The BOTS Act and state laws codify a simple promise: real fans should get a fair shot at face-value seats. If platforms profit from defeating that promise, the law will treat it as an unfair practice.

• Artist Autonomy: Many artists embrace dynamic pricing to reduce arbitrage and capture value for their teams. The FTC’s claim is not that variable pricing is illegal; it’s that someone allegedly turned illegal resale and misleading price displays into a profit center. The line between pro-fan price integrity and tolerated arbitrage is precisely where this suit aims.

What to Watch Next

Procedural posture: The FTC case will proceed in federal court in California; watch for motions to dismiss, discovery fights over internal emails, and any early bids for preliminary injunctions around pricing disclosures or resale conduct. Separately, the DOJ’s breakup suit is on its own track in New York; timing and any overlaps in discovery could matter.

Remedies: Will regulators push for compliance monitors? Mandatory “all-in” defaults with audits? Identity-verified primary sales and transfer restrictions? A prohibition (temporary or permanent) on taking fees from resales of tickets originally sold on Ticketmaster? Those are plausible avenues if the FTC prevails or settles on strong terms.

Congress: If the Senate moves on the TICKET Act, statutory mandates will lock transparency in place—and potentially add enforcement teeth beyond the FTC’s rule.

Earnings: Watch whether Live Nation guides to higher compliance costs or altered take-rates, and whether secondary platforms signal supply tightening (fewer flips) and fee compression. The stock already reflects regulatory discounting; outcomes in either case could swing the multiple.

The Bottom Line

The FTC’s lawsuit frames a moral clarity that fans instinctively understand: if a platform can profit more when tickets get scarcer and pricier, don’t be surprised when tickets feel scarcer and pricier. Whether a court agrees is the multi-billion-dollar question. Add the DOJ’s structural case and a maturing regulatory regime around “junk fees,” and the live-events market is heading toward a world with fewer games around price and fewer excuses around bots.

That will not make front-row seats cheap. But it could make the price you see the price you pay—and make the chances of getting a ticket at face value look less like a lottery and more like a promise the industry is required to keep.