Ticketmaster Must Face FTC Ticket Resale Lawsuit as Judge Says BOTS Act Applies
Categoria: Musica
"The BOTS Act does not preclude platforms from facing liability, and the court will not read it as doing so," the ruling reads.
Por Billboard | 29/09/2026
A judge says Ticketmaster can be sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for allegedly enabling mass-scale ticket reselling on its secondary market. A Monday (Sept. 28) court order, obtained and first reported by Billboard , denies Ticketmaster’s motion to dismiss the bombshell lawsuit brought by the FTC a year ago. The decision does not endorse the truth of the federal agency’s claims, but it holds that they are legally sufficient to move forward into the next phase of litigation. Related Live Nation Legal Chief Denies Ticketmaster Colludes With Resellers at Tense Senate Hearing Billboard to Add Smart Media Albums As Chart-Eligible Sales Formats Duane 'Keffe D' Davis Gives First Interview After Tupac Shakur Murder Conviction The FTC sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation under the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which makes it illegal to circumvent a ticket issuer’s security measures. The agency claimed Ticketmaster violated this statute by allowing brokers to bypass its ticket purchasing limits with hundreds or sometimes thousands of accounts under fake names. According to the lawsuit, Ticketmaster enabled this conduct so that brokers would resell large swaths of tickets on its own secondary market, thus generating billions of dollars in resale fees for the platform. Ticketmaster’s leadership denies these allegations, with Live Nation legal chief Dan Wall testifying before Congress earlier this year that the company has “walked the walk” on anti-broker initiatives to protect artists and fans. But Ticketmaster’s motion to dismiss argued that the FTC lawsuit has an even more fundamental defect : namely, that the BOTS Act is only meant to be wielded against individual resellers, not the ticketing platforms that host them. Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, however, roundly rejected this argument in Monday’s order. “The BOTS Act does not preclude platforms from facing liability,” wrote the judge, “and the court will not read it as doing so.” According to Judge Frimpong, the FTC’s lawsuit lays out sufficient allegations that Ticketmaster allowed ticket brokers to bypass purchase limits. The judge cited an internal email in which a senior executive said they “turn a blind eye as a matter of policy” to this conduct, as well as other communications that allegedly show Ticketmaster was aware of specific brokers who frequently generated fake accounts. Related FTC Gets Green Light for BOTS Act Lawsuit Against Reseller of Taylor Swift Eras Tour Tickets & More “Upon identifying violators, Live Nation and Ticketmaster could have implemented measures to curtail continuing violations of ticket purchase limits,” wrote Judge Frimpong. “However, the FTC maintains that Live Nation and Ticketmaster ‘have reduced, discontinued, or declined to implement the use of tools that could effectively enforce ticket limits against brokers,’ thereby enabling circumvention. Thus, the complaint illustrates that Live Nation a