US FTC Sues Ticket Reseller For Evading Taylor Swift's Eras Tour Ticket Limits (reuters.com)
(Tuesday August 19, 2025 @03:30AM (msmash)
from the about-time dept.)
- Reference: 0178758766
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/08/19/0716252/us-ftc-sues-ticket-reseller-for-evading-taylor-swifts-eras-tour-ticket-limits
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-ftc-sues-ticket-reseller-evading-taylor-swifts-eras-tour-ticket-limits-2025-08-18/
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued ticket reseller Key Investment Group for [1]evading purchasing limits to buy up thousands of tickets to live events including Taylor Swift's Eras tour and resell them at a markup, according to a complaint filed in Maryland federal court on Monday. From a report:
> The Baltimore, Maryland-based company, which operates ticket resale sites including TotalTickets.com, used thousands of Ticketmaster accounts, including fake or purchased accounts, the FTC said.
>
> Ticketmaster faced intense criticism after its botched 2022 sale of tickets to Swift's much-hyped Eras tour, when billions of requests from Swift fans, bots and ticket resellers overwhelmed its website and the company canceled a planned ticket sale to the general public.
>
> For one Swift concert in Las Vegas in March 2023, Key Investment Group and its affiliates used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets and evade a 6-ticket purchase limit, netting more than $119,000 in revenue on resales, the FTC said on Monday. The company made more than $1.2 million reselling 2,280 Swift concert tickets it purchased in 2023, the agency said.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-ftc-sues-ticket-reseller-evading-taylor-swifts-eras-tour-ticket-limits-2025-08-18/
> The Baltimore, Maryland-based company, which operates ticket resale sites including TotalTickets.com, used thousands of Ticketmaster accounts, including fake or purchased accounts, the FTC said.
>
> Ticketmaster faced intense criticism after its botched 2022 sale of tickets to Swift's much-hyped Eras tour, when billions of requests from Swift fans, bots and ticket resellers overwhelmed its website and the company canceled a planned ticket sale to the general public.
>
> For one Swift concert in Las Vegas in March 2023, Key Investment Group and its affiliates used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets and evade a 6-ticket purchase limit, netting more than $119,000 in revenue on resales, the FTC said on Monday. The company made more than $1.2 million reselling 2,280 Swift concert tickets it purchased in 2023, the agency said.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-ftc-sues-ticket-reseller-evading-taylor-swifts-eras-tour-ticket-limits-2025-08-18/
Tickets (Score:3, Insightful)
Tired of hearing about ticket problems.
Sell them only from the official website.
Tie them to an official ID.
Make them non-transferable.
If you turn up at the gate with a ticket that's not got your photo/name/other details on it, and you can't prove that you're the person on the ticket, then you don't get in.
If you're a kid, then you need to be previously named, photographed and be accompanied by a verified ticket holder with a valid ticket for you. People aren't gonna send their kids alone to a concert, with a tout letting them in with a stranger.
Advertise it WAY ahead of time on all the websites, tickets and in the media, so you have both time to weed out any fraud, and fair warning to consumers that all touted tickets are basically worthless or fraudulent.
"Didn't buy it on - Taylorswift.com or whatever - ? Then you won't get in". Massive signs all over the website, posters, venue, etc.
It's 2025, places like Ticketmaster are no longer able to dictate their terms to force a monopoly, and we have the technology to make this just work, and people like Taylor Swift certainly have enough clout and interest to make it happen overnight.
Ticket-touting should have died decades ago, but the industry just can't be arsed to fix the problem.
Re: (Score:1)
yea tie them to ID. EU does that.
Re: (Score:2)
"Tie them to an official ID."
Taylor Swift fans are too young to have an ID. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Below a certain age they're not going to be going to a concert without a responsible adult, or at least an older sibling/whatever, that is old enough to have an acceptable form of ID. That doesn't have to be a formal government ID either; it could be just be the smartphone with the number provided when the ticket(s) were bought, or any other form of "what I have" information that was provided during the original booking that has some form of proof of name/address/etc. Noted that many concerts have rules o
Re: (Score:2)
Even better, allow tickets to be sold and resold at market prices just like anything else.
Why should the FTC be using my tax dollars to support Taylor Swift's broken business model?
The obvious solution is to action the tickets.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. If I pay big bucks for a ticket, and something comes up where I can't attend, I should have every right to sell that ticket (at cost) or give it away. But, yeah, Ticketmaster is evil. I think they should be charged with scalping, for charging more than face value.