Judge Allows FTC Suit Against Ticketmaster Over Bot Law to Proceed

Platform Liability Under the BOTS Act

Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong refused to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation on Monday, ruling that the Better Online Ticket Sales Act—known as the BOTS Act—can be applied to ticketing platforms in addition to individual resellers. In her written order, Frimpong stated that the BOTS Act does not preclude platforms from facing liability, declining to interpret the statute in a way that would shield them.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation had argued that Congress wrote the law to target individual resellers who use software to grab tickets, not the platforms that sell them. The judge's decision addresses only whether the agency's legal theory is sound, leaving the question of whether the accusations are true for the evidence-gathering phase.

Allegations of Broker-Friendly Policies

The FTC contends that Ticketmaster allowed brokers to circumvent its limits on how many tickets a single customer can buy by opening hundreds or thousands of accounts under invented names. According to the complaint, the company tolerated the practice because many of those brokers then listed their tickets on Ticketmaster's own resale marketplace, where each sale generated additional fees.

In concluding that the allegations were sufficient, Frimpong cited an internal email in which a senior executive appeared to concede that the company overlooked such behavior as a matter of routine policy. She also pointed to claims that Ticketmaster knew the identities of specific brokers who repeatedly broke the limits. The judge wrote that Ticketmaster could have taken steps to curb the violations, and the FTC maintains that the company scaled back, abandoned or declined to adopt tools that would have enforced the caps against brokers.

Company Response and Broader Legal Context

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have denied wrongdoing. Dan Wall, Live Nation's legal chief, told Congress earlier this year that the company has taken numerous steps against brokers in order to protect artists and fans. The judge found that this defense did not answer the question of whether a primary ticketing platform can be held liable under the law.

The ruling arrives as Live Nation awaits results of its appeal and the sentencing phase of an antitrust trial that determined the company operated an illegal monopoly. A jury in that case found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster worked to suppress competition, though it remains unclear whether the court will grant the request from dozens of state Attorneys General to break the two companies apart.