Two of the largest global ticket sellers are facing a lawsuit from US government regulators.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation have been sued by The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), accused of illegal ticket resale tactics and costing customers millions of dollars.
The news follows a chaotic general sale for Ariana Grande’s US and UK mini-tour, less than 24 hours prior.
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An ongoing issue with concert sales is resellers purchasing tickets in bulk and uploading them for up to four times face value.
Minutes after the general sale closed, tickets appeared on sites like StubHub and Viagogo for up to over $8000 AUD.
On StubHub alone, there are over 200 tickets available for each of the ten London concerts, which equates to over 10 percent of the O2 arena’s 20,000 capacity per night.
Fans complained to Ticketmaster on X, claiming there were not enough tickets reserved for the general public.
When purchasing resale tickets, StubHub states, “Ticket resale outside the primary’s authorised channels is restricted by the promoter. Please note that, although unlikely, your ticket may not be valid for entry to the event.”
Grande herself shared a message to fans via Instagram after the London presale, during which five dates were added last minute to support high demand.
“What’s been happening with the secondary ticket resellers has been brought to my attention, and of course I am incredibly bothered by it,” she said.
“I care very much and we will do, and are doing, everything we can.”
The following day, the FTC and several states have filed a lawsuit alleging Live Nation and Ticketmaster are coordinating with brokers to harvest millions of dollars from customers.
They allege these companies “deceived artists and consumers by engaging in bait-and-switch pricing” and “deceptively claimed to impose strict limits on the number of tickets that consumers could purchase for an event, even though ticket brokers routinely and substantially exceeded those limits”.
FTC claims Ticketmaster is not only aware of brokers, but has technological support in place to assist them.
Ticketmaster currently controls over 80 percent of all primary ticket sales in the US, and is joined by Ticketek in a duopoly of the Australian ticket market.
Taylor Swift’s Australian leg of the Eras Tour raised a similar issue in 2024, eventually refusing admission to any resold tickets. Some resellers had upsold prices to over $3000 AUD per seat.
FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson released a statement saying, “It should not cost an arm and leg to take the family to a basketball game or attend your favourite musician’s show.”
It’s not the first criticism of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, with a potential class action raised by Australian law firms last year.
For now, fans are being urged not to panic-buy on overpriced resale websites, as there’s a chance these won’t be accepted into the venue.
Artists like Grande will continue to work on a solution to provide more fans with ticket access.
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