Overview

• The FTC and attorneys general from Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
• Regulators allege the companies tacitly coordinated with brokers to bypass ticket-purchase limits, violating the BOTS Act and enabling mass resales at steep markups.
• The suit says Ticketmaster used bait-and-switch pricing by hiding mandatory fees until checkout, citing $16.4 billion in such fees from 2019 to 2024.
• The complaint cites dominance in roughly 80% of major-venue primary ticketing, about $82.6 billion in purchases on the platform since 2019, and $3.7 billion in resale revenue.
• Internal materials quoted by the FTC include a review finding five brokers controlled 6,345 accounts and 246,407 tickets, as the agency seeks injunctions, monetary relief and civil penalties while the companies have not issued a detailed rebuttal.