When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a civil lawsuit against Ticketmaster in September, it was not just attacking the world’s largest ticketing company, but a rigged system that the public long suspected existed, even if it couldn’t prove it. In addition to decades-old complaints over drip pricing, the FTC alleged Ticketmaster often broke its own rules and allegedly helped brokers purchase tickets directly off its primary website and easily relist them on its resale platform. Ticketmaster profited to the tune of $3.7 billion from resale fees between 2019 and 2024, thanks in large part to broker sales. Much of what the FTC alleges surfaced nearly a decade ago, when reporters from the Toronto Star went undercover at a ticket broker conference in 2018 and revealed that Ticketmaster regularly worked directly with brokers, condemning them in public while quietly building tools that allowed them to upload tickets en masse. Like most Ticketmaster scandals, the news sparked consumer outrage, but little regulatory action.
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This FTC lawsuit feels different. Ticketmaster has already agreed to make significant changes to how it does business with brokers. But those changes might not be enough to satisfy regulators who have identified the company’s core market-design problem, which is centered around venue exclusivity for ticketing companies. Unlike in Europe, North American venues enter exclusive contracts with companies like Ticketmaster that pay large advances to sell tickets for a venue. The economics of exclusivity means that Ticketmaster is effectively purchasing the right to charge fees to end consumers in exchange for some upfront guarantees, service fee rebates and the software systems necessary to manage venues’ events.
In many ways, the multi-billion-dollar secondary market ecosystem is an unintended consequence of that exclusivity. High service fees and outdated buying experiences created the opportunity for StubHub and other secondary market exchanges to rapidly acquire fans. Once these exchanges obtained critical market share with the ticket-buying public, venues and teams quickly realized that exclusivity came at a cost — namely, missing out on the massive audiences cultivated by sites like StubHub and SeatGeek, which have invested millions in SEO. With inventory increasingly skipping the primary and moving directly to the secondary, exchanges have become big businesses. Over the last four years, Vivid Seats and StubHub have gone public; SeatGeek is exploring an IPO; and private equity firms acquired increasingly large stakes in brokers, exchanges and adjacent players.
To regain its control from the secondary marketplaces, Ticketmaster needed to take on the resale industry it had unintentionally created. For that, it needed a villain, which it found in the form of automated software used to bulk-purchase tickets — colloquially known as bots. Bots, it argued, were the enemy — jumping ahead of consumers to buy the best tickets to concerts, marking them up on resale sites and gouging fans who just wanted to see their favorite artists. Lobbying efforts by Ticketmaster eventually led to the passage of the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act of 2016, which made the use of bots illegal and also made it unlawful to attempt to circumvent ticket purchasing limits and the security measures put in place to enforce them. Emboldened by this power, Ticketmaster quickly went from a 25% market share in the secondary space to leveraging its primary exclusivity to control that market as well.
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Then the BOTS ACT Backfires
The only prosecutions under the BOTS Act prior to 2025 consisted of three simultaneous complaints against different New York brokers in 2021 for using automated software to bulk-purchase tickets — the classic definition of bots.
Then, following a March 2025 executive order, the scope of the BOTS Act expanded, and Ticketmaster found itself the target of the very bill it helped craft. Now, under this new reading, any means of exceeding posted ticket limits could trigger prosecution.
A month before its filing against Ticketmaster, the FTC charged a Maryland broker, Key Investment Group (KIG), with sidestepping purchase limits. KIG held upwards of 13,000 Ticketmaster accounts, supported with virtual credit cards, IP proxies and SIM banks to bypass Ticketmaster’s security measures. While these weren’t bots in the classic sense, they used technology to violate the site’s terms of service — even if they employed what were considered acceptable broker tactics.
And then the FTC came after Ticketmaster as an accomplice, signaling its intent to hold the industry, not just brokers, accountable. The FTC alleges Ticketmaster helped brokers bypass posted purchase limits on the primary market, then facilitated the resale of those same tickets on its own secondary platform. As fans expressed frustration about their inability to access high-demand tickets at face value, Ticketmaster stands accused of actively enabling brokers to acquire primary tickets so it could “collect another round of fees on the same tickets” upon resale. The BOTS Act prohibits not just “circumventing a security measure” used to enforce ticket limits, but “sell[ing] or offer[ing] to sell any event ticket … obtained in violation of” those limits. Ticketmaster is accused of violating both sections of the statute.
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While Ticketmaster’s combined primary-plus-secondary exposure at this scale is unique, the pleading reads like a blueprint for broader industry scrutiny. The FTC appears to be laying the groundwork to establish a precedent outside the BOTS Act in anticipation of the courts or Congress narrowing its scope. By isolating its claim that Ticketmaster was ignoring its own purchase limits, the agency was adding a separate count under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices.
The Future Landscape
What happens next depends on whether the FTC prevails against Ticketmaster — and how broadly it enforces those limits beyond the current cases. Ticketmaster has already announced its intention to sunset the company’s TradeDesk tool, which made it easier for brokers to move tickets from its primary platform to its resale platform. The company has also pledged to strictly enforce its one-account-per-person rule and restrict resellers to the same limits that apply to the primary market. These concessions could erode the supply that sustains Ticketmaster’s own resale platform — unless competing exchanges adopt similar restrictions.
Ticketmaster’s concessions appear to be tailored to appease regulators, but they may ultimately undercut the company’s ability to command exclusivity on primary deals. Today, resale partnerships often generate more upfront revenue than primary ticketing contracts. With brokers estimated to represent roughly 70% of the secondary market, and most operating beyond ticket limits, stricter enforcement could materially alter those economics. Consolidated broker partnerships, which have replaced the patchwork of local resellers for most large-scale rights holders, will similarly need to adjust if Ticketmaster follows through. And with fans having been trained to buy through secondary market platforms, it is unclear how, or if, they will return to primary outlets.
The question that remains is whether rights holders, faced with shrinking secondary market revenues, will continue to accept Ticketmaster’s exclusivity model. If they do not, North American ticketing may see a shift towards the open distribution models common in Europe and elsewhere as rights holders seek to maintain existing partnerships.
Barry Kahn is the founder and former CEO of Qcue, where he pioneered dynamic pricing in live entertainment. He now serves as principal of Kanmoa Expert Strategy, providing strategic advice and litigation support on ticketing, technology, and live entertainment, and as CEO of Duæl, a sports property reimagining track & field. After Qcue’s acquisition by Endeavor, Kahn led ticketing and software development for its hospitality division, building the first global hospitality ticketing platform for an Olympic Games.
