Ticketmaster is being sued by the FTC for illegal business practices. The FTC, and seven state governments, filed a suit against Livenation and its parent company for a number of illegal ticket selling practices, with most of the claims centered around Livenation's interactions with ticket resellers. The claims involve “bait-and-switch pricing,” where consumers often pay more than advertised. Further, there are claims that the company imposed "Strict limits" on the number of tickets that any one entity can buy are false since the company routinely dumps thousands of tickets, per show, directly into the hands of resellers. The FTC also said that fees are often hidden and not shown until the end of the purchase, and they can be as much as 44% of the final cost of the ticket. (Editor note- we have actually paid much more than that- namely, at the Sting/Shaggy show last weekend, we paid a whopping 85% service fee, at the door). Ticketmaster has collected $16 billion in fees from 2019 to 2024.

Livenation controls about 80% of major venues in the United States. Consumers spent nearly $83 billion buying tickets from the company between 2019 to 2024.