Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) demanded Ticketmaster explain whether it misled Congress in 2023 about its handling of bot scalpers – days after the Federal Trade Commission sued the company for allegedly turning a blind eye to online price gouging.
The FTC’s bombshell lawsuit last month accused Ticketmaster and parent Live Nation of charging exorbitant fees on online sales, allowing bots to illegally resell millions of tickets and colluding with third-party brokers by letting them exceed ticket purchase limits.
In a scathing letter sent to Ticketmaster CFO Joe Berchtold late Tuesday, Blackburn expressed “grave concerns” about the allegations and cited testimony in 2023 in which Berchtold claimed the company was “doing everything we can to fight the people who attack our sales and steal tickets meant for real fans.”
“It is astounding that you would make such a claim while actively colluding with scalpers and bad actors to extort the American public,” Blackburn said in the letter, which was also signed by Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM).
“Instead of casting blame on any entity other than Ticketmaster, we urge you to be forthright with Congress and the American public about the extent of your complicity in allowing bots to buy up and hoard massive amounts of tickets,” Blackburn added.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment.
As The Post reported, the lawsuit has the potential to financially cripple Ticketmaster.
The FTC is seeking billions of dollars in penalties under the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, or BOTS Act, which allows fines of $53,000 per violation.
“The total amount of fines are potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” a source close to the situation said.
Blackburn and other lawmakers stepped up scrutiny of Ticketmaster’s practices in part because of a fiasco in which the company mishandled sales of Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.” The incident sparked a wave of lawsuits from disgruntled “Swifties.”
That scrutiny culminated in a 2023 hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, with Blackburn calling Live Nation’s inability to deal with its bot problem “unbelievable.”
“When pressed on the issue of cybersecurity protections, you seemed dumbfounded and argued that LiveNation spent over a billion dollars investing in site protections against bots,” Blackburn wrote in the letter to Berchtold.
The Republican cited several points that surfaced in the FTC’s lawsuit, including an internal email in which a senior Ticketmaster executive said the company “turn[ed] a blind eye as a matter of policy” when brokers and their bots bought up ticket inventory.
Blackburn demanded Ticketmaster provide answers to several questions in writing by Oct. 14, including whether the company stands by its earlier statement that it does not “turn a blind eye” to violations of the BOTS Act in light of the allegations raised by the FTC.
Ticketmaster was also pressed to explain whether it has “ever purposefully relax[ed] enforcement of ticket limits for certain buyers or brokers for financial gain,” as well as why it invests millions in anti-bot technology despite allegedly colluding with brokers who circumvent it.
The FTC filed suit against Ticketmaster just a few months after President Trump issued an executive order directing the feds to step up enforcement of the BOTS Act and other measures meant to protect consumers from harmful ticket sale practices.
Trump appeared alongside musician Kid Rock in the Oval Office to tout the initiative.
