Utah has joined six other states and the U.S Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a bombshell lawsuit against Ticketmaster, accusing the online broker of raking in profits through exorbitant fees and turning a blind eye as bots illegally resell millions of tickets to customers.
The suit names Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment Inc., and accuses them of hiding fees and misrepresenting ticket prices. The suit also alleges Ticketmaster encouraged brokers to circumvent the site’s enforcement measures and sell millions of tickets on the secondary market.
The Utah Department of Commerce’s Division of Consumer Protection (DCP) and the Office of the Utah Attorney General (OAG) brought claims under the lawsuit filed recently in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
The other states joining Utah in the suit are Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee and Virginia.
“Anyone who has ever tried buying concert tickets, only to get hit with a pile of sneaky fees at the checkout, or perhaps even find out the show is actually ‘sold out,’ knows how frustrating it is to buy tickets with Ticketmaster or Live Nation,” said Attorney General Derek Brown in his office’s announcement of the suit. “Today, Utah says ‘no more.’ It is all too common for fans to get funneled to shady ticket brokers who charge jaw-dropping prices — way beyond what artists ever intended.
“Ticketmaster’s game of bait-and-switch, cozying up with unscrupulous scalpers, inflates costs and leaves fans frustrated. Today Utah is stepping up, cracking down on these deceptive tactics, to make sure everyone can get seats to their favorite shows without being victimized,” Brown continued.
The FTC-authored suit alleges that California-based Ticketmaster deceived artists and consumers by engaging in bait-and-switch pricing through advertising lower prices for tickets than what consumers must pay to purchase tickets; 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; and sold millions of tickets, often at much higher cost to consumers, on its resale platform that those brokers obtained in excess of artists’ ticket limits.
“President Donald Trump made it clear in his March executive order that the federal government must protect Americans from being ripped off when they buy tickets to live events,” said FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson, in his office’s statement. “American live entertainment is the best in the world and should be accessible to all of us. It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician’s show. The … FTC is working hard to ensure that fans have a shot at buying fair-priced tickets, and today’s lawsuit is a monumental step in that direction.”
Ticketmaster is America’s leading provider of tickets for concerts — controlling about 80 percent or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing — and it also has a growing share of ticket resales in the secondary market. From 2019 to 2024 alone, consumers spent more than $82.6 billion purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster.
The FTC alleges that in public, Ticketmaster maintains that its business model is at odds with brokers that routinely exceed ticket limits. But in private, Ticketmaster acknowledged that it benefits from brokers preventing ordinary Americans from purchasing tickets to the shows they want to see at the prices artists set, Rolling Stone magazine reported.
In their statement, Utah officials allege Ticketmaster’s fees above the ticket price averaged from 24 percent to 44 percent of the total ticket price. From 2019 to 2024, Ticketmaster generated over $11 billion in revenue from mandatory fees.
“Live Nation and Ticketmaster have systematically eroded consumer trust by deliberately misrepresenting ticket costs. By hiding mandatory fees and misleading customers about ticket limits and security measures, they have not only violated consumer protection laws but also undermined the integrity of the ticket purchasing experience,” said Margaret Woolley Busse, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce. “Our Division of Consumer Protection plays a vital role in ensuring transparency in pricing. We are committed to protecting consumers from deceptive practices and unnecessary fees. We are taking action to hold Live Nation and Ticketmaster accountable and restore fairness in the marketplace.”
The FTC vote authorizing the staff to file the complaint was 2-0-1, with Commissioner Melissa Holyoak recusing herself due to her previous work as Utah’s solicitor general.
The suit is seeking billions of dollars in penalties under the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, or BOTS Act. The FTC has jurisdiction over the 2016 law, which bans the use of bots to buy tickets in bulk — a common tactic that allows resellers to jack up prices. The BOTS Act allows fines of up to $53,000 per violation. That means Ticketmaster, in theory, could face huge fines that could bankrupt the company.
In recent years, Ticketmaster came under harsh criticism for its mishandling of ticket sales to Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.” Utah Sen. Mike Lee was one of the senators questioning Ticketmaster’s market power following the company’s presale meltdown.
In a Senate Antitrust Committee hearing, Lee said, “It’s very important that we maintain fair, free, open and even fierce competition. It increases quality and it reduces prices.”