The US Federal Trade Committee (FTC) and a group of general lawyers of the two parties filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its mother company on Thursday, saying that they are forcing consumers to pay more to watch live events through a variety of illegal tactics.
FTC said that Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, have deceived artists and consumers by announcing low ticket prices, which consumers must pay and demand strict borders on the number of tickets that consumers can buy for an event.
In fact, FTC said, Ticketmaster is with ticket brokers who exceed these ticket limits. FTC said the brokers use fake accounts to buy tickets worth millions of dollars and then sell them with a great description on the TicketyMaster platform. FTC said Ticketmaster benefits from the additional fees it collects from these sales.
The Associated Press has arrived at Live National Entertainment, based in California, for comment.
The US Department of Justice is sued Live Nation, on the pretext that its merger for the year 2010 with Ticketmaster has led to a monopoly and the company must be dismantled.
Ticketmaster controls 80 percent or more of the main tickets for the main concert places in the United States, according to FTC. The agency added that consumers spent more than 82.6 billion dollars in purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster between 2019 and 2024.
“The American entertainment is the best in the world and must be available to all of us. It should not cost an arm and leg to move the family to the baseball game or attend your favorite music show,” Andrew Ferguson, Chairman of the Federal Trade Committee said in a statement.
The lawsuit was filed in the Central Central Province Court in California. He joined the lawsuit in the public prosecutor in Colorado, Florida, Ilinoi, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.
Ticketmaster has been in the scenes of legislators in the United States since 2022, when he was amazingly a ticket sales for Taylor Swift tour. The company’s website was immersed by fans and robots of mediators, which were attracting tickets to sell on secondary sites. Senate members grilled the living nation in the 2023 hearing.
But the reform in the industry was slow. The Biden Administration has taken a measure with a ban on unwanted fees, which requires Ticketmaster to offer the full price of the ticket once consumers start shopping. This rule entered into force in May.
US President Donald Trump also targeted this industry. In March, Trump signed an executive order directing US officials to ensure tickets for internal revenue service rules. The matter also directed FTC to “take enforcement measures to prevent unfair, deceptive and anti -competition behavior in the secondary ticket market.”
In August, FTC filed a lawsuit against Key Investment Group, which is based in FTC, claiming that it used thousands of fake ticket accounts and other ways to buy tickets for events, including the Swift tour.
Can the competition office in Canada follow its example?
“Ticketmaster is really a frequent bulletin when it comes to these deception practices, excessive charging and allowing their clips to raise the price of tickets,” said Keeldon Bester, CEO of Ottawa CEO, Executive Director of the Canadian Project for Combating the Dead, which is a coincidence in addressing the monopolistic force in Canada.
The United States has a stronger tool group than Canada when it comes to consumer protection, according to Bester. He said that while the federal level specifically focuses on deceptive marketing tactics, consumer protection laws related to ticket sales are delegated to provinces.
“A boycott like Ontario will be in a good position to pursue this practice, (which) is less than deception and more about allowing subscribers to run,” Bester said.
In 2018, the competition office in Canada sued Ticketmaster, claiming that the company was involved in “driving pricing” – a practice in which the company misleads consumers at the final price of the product by adding additional fees in a later stage of the exit process.
The office claimed that the company exaggerates ticket prices by at least 20 percent and in some cases by 65 percent. The company has never recognized that no violations were committed, but it agreed to a $ 6 million settlement This has been completed Last January.
Bester expects that the American lawsuit will play similarly for several years, as the company aims to conclude a deal with the government. Whether consumers will be satisfied with the end result, it is a different story.
“In every turn, they took the opportunity to deceive customers, to pressure the artists and dispersed places,” Pester said. “So this is one of the reasons, among many, that any kind of settlement or negotiating agreement is unlikely to be already to consumers.”
A spokesman for the CBC News office said he is aware of the American lawsuit, but he indicated that the office is being worked in secret and cannot confirm whether or he will launch a similar investigation.
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