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FTC Probes Whether Ticketmaster Does Enough To Stop Resale Bots (reuters.com) 38

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
The FTC is investigating whether Ticketmaster is doing enough to prevent bots from illegally reselling tickets on its platform, with a decision on the matter coming within weeks, according to Bloomberg (paywalled). Reuters reports: The 2016 law prohibits the use of bots and other methods to bypass ticket purchase limits set by online sellers. As part of the probe, FTC investigators are assessing whether Ticketmaster has a financial incentive to allow resellers to circumvent its ticket limit rules, according to the report. A settlement is also possible, Bloomberg reported. If the FTC pursues a case and Live Nation loses, the company could face billions of dollars in penalties, as the law permits fines of up to $53,000 per violation.

FTC Probes Whether Ticketmaster Does Enough To Stop Resale Bots More | Reply

FTC Probes Whether Ticketmaster Does Enough To Stop Resale Bots

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  • Easily solved (Score:1, Insightful)

    by presearch ( 214913 )

    Drop a million or so off at the White House, and poof!
    No more regulators. No more rulings. No more fines.
    Just pure, friction-free Capitalism.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Even easier, just purchase a million USD of Trump's ClownCoin and enjoy the same benefits without showing up on the WH visitor's list. Grifting in the 21st century.

  • when ticket master resells an ticket they make X3 the fees!

    • I wouldn't be surprised if it's revealed that it's ticketmaster or the developers of their platform that's behind the bots just to line their pockets. It woukd be easy to create a backdoor for your bot to grab tickets before start of sales if you have developed the system.

      • I wouldn't be surprised if it's revealed that it's ticketmaster or the developers of their platform that's behind the bots just to line their pockets.

        Related Rick and Morty - er, Summer ...

        Rick: Well, obviously, Summer, it appears the lower tier of this society is being manipulated through sex and advanced technology by a hidden ruling class. Sound familiar?

        Summer: [Gasps] Ticketmaster.

    • If they would just sell tickets at demand price in the first place, it wouldn't be an issue.

  • This whole problem is so easily solved. I'm tired of reading about all this bullshit they do EXCEPT solve the actual problem.

  • We're talking about a cartel. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PubJeezy ( 10299395 ) on Monday September 15, 2025 @10:08PM (#65662376)
    We're talking about a cartel.

    Cartel - A cartel is an association of independent firms or nations that collude to restrict competition and control prices for a product or service.

    All of these resale businesses are clearly part of Ticketmaster's business model. They are beholden to them and exist for their benefit. They run conventions where they all get together and describe their collusion against the customer (https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/we-went-undercover-as-ticket-scalpers-and-ticketmaster-offered-to-help-us-do-business/article_475cbd40-6c6b-555f-83a3-7d225694669d.html).

    I sincerely believe that the word "cartel" has been so heavily associated with the beheadings and airline bombings of transnational drug operators so we'd stop associating it with the market manipulating scumbags in our economy. America has a Cartel problem.

    • While we’re giving the lesson on “cartel”, perhaps we should remember there’s another related concept feeding that problem.

      Were talking about a monopoly. Also known as something that is (allegedly) illegal. For every reason being proven by monopolies today.

      A cartel, requires power to grow. We gave it to them in the form of zero competition.

      • Monopolies are not illegal, by either word or intent of the law. Exploiting a monopoly to suppress competition or otherwise unfairly manipulate the market is illegal. The FTC sometimes preemptively prevents large mergers that would result in monopolies likely to lead to abuses.

        Now, Ticketmaster clearly falls afoul of the unfair practices and manipulation part, so everything else you say is spot on.

        • Monopolies are not illegal, by either word or intent of the law.

          So the FTC simply allows them to happen then? Because if you give Greed the choice to dominate the market, it will choose domination to maximize profit and shareholder return. As a fiduciary duty calls. Every time.

          Exploiting a monopoly to suppress competition or otherwise unfairly manipulate the market is illegal.

          They don’t label an entity a monopoly just for shits and giggles, and it’s certainly not a badge of honor. You earn that label when you try and monopolize markets, or when it’s already known you do. And if it’s illegal, it’s illegal for valid reason.

          The FTC sometimes preemptively prevents large mergers that would result in monopolies likely to lead to abuses.

          Read that par

  • When you see how Live Nation are involved in the entire supply chain of concerts, at least in the UK. They need to ban 'surge pricing' on the day of the opening sale and ticket resales only at face value. The 2000% profit from resellers is driving this Cartel behaviour

  • The fans are to blame (Score:3)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2025 @02:25AM (#65662588)
    We should be selling tickets as a dutch auction. Day one the prices should be $50,000 for front row to Taylor swift and the price should drop to near zero if the ticket isn't sold as the concert date approaches. Concert tickets are a limited item and price it the fairest way to decide who gets to go. A Dutch auction is an efficient way to discover the market price for concert tickets. Fans by not recongnizing this, by hoping they could get a front row seat for $200, created the environment for scalpers and the secondary ticket market. TicketMaster is scum. I have family in the music promotion business and they hate ticketmaster but ticketmaster won out because they were the scummiest in an inefficient market. They pushed the limits further and captured more of the price inefficiency. The artist are getting screwed but the artists were powerless because ticketmaster now has exclusive deals with almost every significant venue in the western world. If you want to fix it, you first have to recongnize the value of a ticket is what the most someone wants to pay for it is. It isn't what you hope to pay for it. It isn't what you paid for it 20 years ago. It's what some rich guy will pay for his daughter to see her favourite singer. What you are willing to pay for a ticket should logically be what you are willing to sell it for. After we the fans come to our senses, we need to stop allowing venues to have exclusive deals with ticketmaster. If I rent an areana I should be able to sell the tickets anyway I want.
    • So only the wealthy are allowed to attend concerts? thats what would happen. To me a fair method is the lottery system Japan uses for concert tickets. It ensures everyone has the same opportunity to attend shows, not just the rich.

      • So only the wealthy are allowed to attend concerts? thats what would happen.

        So what?

        We are talking about luxury goods and services!! Only the wealthy can afford a Ferrari too. You don't see everyone bitching about that.

         

      • If you aren't willing to pay $10,000 for the front row of a concert and someone else will then you don't get to go. The artist should get to sell the ticket to the person who wants to go the most.
        Or another way to think of it, if you aren't willing to pay $10,000 but you won the lottery for the ticket, then you would likely be willing to sell your ticket for $10,000. So you wouldn't go anyway. The difference being you, not the artist, would be getting the $10,000. Why do you think you deserve this?

        • To be fair, the person who pays the most pay not be the person who wants to go the most.

          The person who may want to go the most may simply not have the resources required, and can't get them. Too bad for them!! FYI, these are people who would, in your example, not have the $10K, but would borrow it and buy the ticket, if they could find someone foolish enough to loan them the $10K.

          We have a system in this world. That system fundamentally is this: having access to resources provides access to other resources.

  • Not the right probe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2025 @02:56AM (#65662606)
    The right probe is into breaking up TicketMaster, which is a monopoly. e.g. by breaking its ties to venues and tours, requiring sales exceeding a certain threshold (venue, seats, days etc.) to use an open ticket sale model or whatever. The issue of touts is orthogonal to that glaring issue.

  • Narrator: It was found that Ticketmaster somehow did less than nothing.

  • That's their real name. TicketBastard. They are absolutely a monopoly, and I doubt that we're ever going to see much movement on that because they really have the market locked down behind their completely shitty purchasing experience. I'm surprised that the prevailing idea is that they "don't do enough" to prevent predatory ticket resale when the investigation should be whether or not they're involved in price fixing with the scalpers.
  • Just make it illegal to resell a ticket for more than $5 over the retail price.
  • "Scalpers" and second-hand sellers in collusion with Ticketmaster is clearly a much bigger problem, but I am just always steamed at having a "convenience fee" tacked on to the ticket price, even though there is literally no other way to buy a ticket.

  • You want to buy a ticket with a physical credit card?
    Have a machine at the theater - just like movie theaters do.

    To pick up the ticket, you need the physical credit card you bought the ticket with.

    You want to buy one without a physical credit card? They take a photo of your face when you buy the ticket and print it on the ticket.

    Problem solved, no more ticket scalping/ 'resale'.

  • Ticketmaster offers a service to their customers: the bands, the venues... They have different plans, with fixed or dynamic pricing, different level of control on the secondary market, etc.. Their customers choose what they want.

    They may have a quasi-monopoly on that service, which is a problem, and it can justify the high fees, but beside that, for pretty much everything they do, their customers asked for it. If tickets are sold initially below market value and resale at above face value is accepted *becau

    • Ticketmaster runs there secondary market and gets to make X3 fees per ticket.
      So they can sell tickets low to their own bots / 2th party bots that get to use API's.
      they fuck the artists by only giving them an % of the low base price that very few real people get to use but get to sell tickets at an higher price that artists get %0 of the resale.
      Also they control the venues so they can say take our deal or you don't get to play at all.

  • Normally I am against forced breakups because they cause more harm than good (like the idea to break up Google and force them to spin off Chrome or Android or the idea some politicians have had in Australia to break up our big supermarket duopoly) but in this case a breakup of Ticketmaster would be good.

    That plus some restrictions (e.g. no more exclusivity deals with venues/acts/artists/bands/teams/managers/etc and banning both the new-ticket-sales part of the business and the used-ticket-sales part of the

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