Ticketmaster will bar users from having multiple accounts on the platform, the company said in a letter to lawmakers last week after Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment were sued by the Federal Trade Commission last month over allegations of colluding with scalpers and violating the BOTS Act.
The policy change — disclosed in a letter dated Oct. 17 to senators Marsha Blackburn and Ben Ray Luján after the two lawmakers wrote to the company last month demanding answers over that lawsuit — marks a significant change for Ticketmaster, which also said in the letter that it would be closing TradeDesk, its ticket inventory platform that allows ticket brokers list their tickets on multiple ticketing sites.
“I want to assure you that Live Nation and Ticketmaster share your commitment to supporting artists and fans and protecting the integrity of the live entertainment industry,” Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vp, corporate and regulatory affairs, wrote in the letter. “Unfortunately, the recently filed lawsuit does not advance that shared objective. The FTC complaint presents a distorted view of the facts and the law, specifically the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act. While we would prefer to work with the FTC on addressing the real threats to the live event industry instead of litigating these claims, we look forward to setting the record straight here, and if necessary in court.”
The FTC first filed its suit against Live Nation last month, alleging that Ticketmaster coordinates with ticket brokers and allows them to skirt ticket purchase limitations on the primary market so that they can sell them at a considerable markup for millions of dollars of additional profit on the secondary market. Multiple Ticketmaster accounts and TradeDesk empower scalpers and put fans at a disadvantage, the FTC stated.
In the letter, Wall called those claims “categorically false,” describing the premise as a “conspiracy,” and that it “makes no economic sense.” Wall said Live Nation/Ticketmaster, which comprises about 20 percent of the secondary ticket marketplace, only makes about 3 percent of its revenue from secondary ticket sales, and less than 2 percent from secondary ticket fees.
Regarding brokers’ use of multiple accounts to secure concert tickets, Wall said it’s been standard practice for decades across the entire ticket industry and “harkens back to the days of physical tickets, when ticket brokers would often have a number of employees or others paid to stand in line and purchase concert tickets.”
And while using multiple accounts to get tickets isn’t technically illegal, Wall acknowledged that
“it has gotten out of hand.”
“We of course understand that the emotional force of the FTC’s lawsuit comes from the fact that some ticket brokers today simply have too many accounts,” Wall wrote. “It doesn’t matter whether that’s lawful or unlawful. What started as a reasonable and acceptable level of behavior has been abused, and today it is growing exponentially through digitally exploited means. It’s unfair to artists and fans and it is time to do something about it.”
Starting now, Ticketmaster, which appointed a new president last week, is now adopting a policy allowing all of its users to have just one account, brokers included. Wall said the company expects “scalpers will do everything in their power to undermine us” but added that Live Nation would use AI and identity verification tech to enforce the rules. All tickets listed for resale will require a taxpayer identification number, and excess Ticketmaster accounts will be canceled “in due course.”
TradeDesk, meanwhile, is Ticketmaster’s version of similar broker tools like StubHub’s Ticket Utils or Vivid Seats’ Sky Box, software that streamlines sales for ticket brokers by letting them list tickets they’ve obtained on multiple ticket marketplaces. Ticketmaster called the FTC’s description of TradeDesk as “technological support for unlawful ticket harvesting” as “plainly false,” further clarifying that TradeDesk “has no functionality to buy primary tickets.”
Nonetheless, Wall said, “we have come to the conclusion that the reputational harm to Ticketmaster from having to explain and defend TradeDesk exceeds its value. While we believe this criticism is unfair, we are removing TradeDesk’s concerts ticket management functionality from the market.”
The FTC suit is just the latest major litigation Live Nation faces. Last year, the Department of Justice filed a major antitrust lawsuit against the company over monopoly claims, calling to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Live Nation has vehemently denied those allegations as well, though that hasn’t stopped criticism from other stakeholders in the business.
“Live Nation’s ‘actions’ on resale detailed in a letter to Congress are too little and too late to get back the trust of fans, artists and stages,” the National Independent Venue Association said in a statement Monday, further calling for Live Nation to voluntarily cap ticket resale prices to no higher than face value. “They apparently got caught opening up their systems to predatory resellers, which is a betrayal of fans and artists.
“This looks like an attempt to clean up their devastated public image following the Federal Trade Commission’s strong BOTS Act and deceptive practices case against them,” NIVA continued. “Based on that suit and this letter, we have seen clear evidence that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are in bed with scalpers, and resale platforms like StubHub and Vivid Seats benefit daily from it.”
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