By DEE-ANN DURBIN
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit Monday against a ticket broker, alleging the company used illegal tactics to exceed purchasing limits for popular events and then resold tickets at significantly higher prices.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Maryland, the FTC said Maryland-based ticket broker Key Investment Group has used thousands of fictitious Ticketmaster accounts and other methods to buy tickets for events, including Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
According to the FTC, Key Investment Group – which does business under brand names like Epic Seats and Totally Tix – purchased at least 379,776 tickets from Ticketmaster between Nov. 1, 2022, and Dec. 30, 2023. The company spent nearly $57 million to buy the tickets and resold them on secondary marketplaces for approximately $64 million.
For just one Taylor Swift concert, Key Investment Group allegedly used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets, dramatically exceeding the Eras Tour’s 2023 six-ticket purchase limit per event, the FTC said. Fans were so frustrated by the difficulty getting tickets for Swift’s tour that the U.S. Senate wound up grilling Ticketmaster in a 2023 hearing.
In a statement released Monday, Key Investment Group said it will vigorously defend itself against the FTC’s lawsuit.
“The case threatens to dismantle the secondary ticket market for live events, further consolidating power in the hands of the industry’s largest monopoly,” the company said.
Key Investment Group said the FTC is misapplying the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, a 2016 law which it said was meant to target malicious software, not legitimate resale businesses. Key Investment Group sued the FTC in July to try to prevent the agency from using the law against it, saying it uses human employees — not bots — to buy tickets.
But the FTC said that law also prohibits anyone from circumventing security measures and other controls meant to enforce posted ticket limits.
In March, with Kid Rock by his side in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing U.S. officials to ensure ticket resellers are complying with Internal Revenue Service rules. The order also directed the FTC to ensure “price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process” and to “take enforcement action to prevent unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct in the secondary ticketing market.”