Ticketmaster Must Face FTC Ticket Resale Lawsuit as Judge Says BOTS Act Applies

A federal judge has ruled that Ticketmaster can be sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations of enabling mass-scale ticket reselling on its secondary market. In a court order issued on Monday, the judge denied Ticketmaster's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The decision does not confirm the FTC's claims, but it establishes that they are legally sufficient to proceed in litigation.

The FTC had filed the lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation under the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which prohibits the circumvention of ticket issuers' security measures. The agency alleged that Ticketmaster allowed brokers to bypass purchase limits using multiple accounts under fake names, generating billions in resale fees for the platform.

Ticketmaster's leadership denies these allegations, but the judge rejected their argument that the BOTS Act only applies to individual resellers, not ticketing platforms. The judge found sufficient allegations in the FTC's lawsuit, citing internal emails that suggest Ticketmaster was aware of and allowed brokers to generate fake accounts.