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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
The FTC is suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster over ‘illegal ticket | |
resale’ practices | |
By Jordan Valinsky, CNN | |
Updated: | |
12:55 PM EDT, Thu September 18, 2025 | |
Source: CNN | |
The United States federal government and seven states are suing | |
Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, for | |
failing to crack down on ticket resellers, which is forcing customers | |
to “pay substantially more than face value” for and events. | |
The Federal Trade Commission leveled a litany of accusations against | |
Live Nation in its Thursday, including “bait-and-switch pricing,” | |
where consumers often pay more than advertised, and said claims that | |
the company imposes “strict limits” on ticket purchases are false | |
since “ticket brokers routinely and substantially exceeded those | |
limits.” | |
Shares of Live Nation () dropped more than 2% in midday trading. The | |
company didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. | |
“American live entertainment is the best in the world and should be | |
accessible to all of us,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a | |
release. “It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a | |
baseball game or attend your favorite musician’s show.” | |
Ticketmaster dominates the market, controlling ticketing for about 80% | |
of major venues in the United States. Consumers spent nearly $83 | |
billion buying tickets from the company between 2019 to 2024, the FTC | |
said. | |
The FTC also took aim at the company’s fees. The agency said that | |
fees are often hidden and not shown until the end of the purchase, and | |
they can be as much as 44% of the final cost of the ticket. | |
Ticketmaster has collected $16 billion in fees from 2019 to 2024. | |
The FTC claims that Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s practices violates | |
an executive order signed during President Donald Trump’s first term | |
in 2016, called the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, a law that | |
allows the agency to take action against individuals and companies that | |
use bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and resell them. | |
Trump signed a in March, a few months into his second term. Trump said | |
at the time that he hadn’t known much about price gouging, “but I | |
checked it out, and it is a big problem.” | |
The issue of price gouging drew heightened attention during in 2022, | |
when resale prices hit tens of thousands of dollars. The sky-high | |
prices caused fierce backlash against Ticketmaster, the country’s | |
biggest ticketing website and concert promoter, from lawmakers who | |
accused the company of acting as a monopoly. | |
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