Illinois Attorney General, FTC file lawsuit against Ticketmaster for ‘deceptive business practices’

CHICAGO, Ill. (WCIA) — The Attorney General of Illinois is among those taking Ticketmaster to court over allegations that the company is unlawfully coordinating with ticket brokers and deceptively charging customers more than the price originally listed online.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined a bipartisan group of state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to file the lawsuit. The defendants are Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment Inc.

The lawsuit alleges that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are coordinating with ticket brokers to drive up the prices of tickets on the resale market. It also alleges that Ticketmaster lists a ticket price on its website that is deceptively lower than what customers actually pay for — the price differential is added at checkout, Raoul said.

“Ticketmaster’s deceptive business tactics have left fans paying steep hidden fees and pushed them into expensive, secondary ticket markets,” said Raoul. “While Ticketmaster claims to limit bulk purchases by brokers, it allows its own rules on purchase limits to be broken. The company then profits when those tickets sell for higher prices — and Ticketmaster can collect another round of fees — in its own resale marketplace.”

Ticket limits and prices are typically set by the artists, Raoul said. But in a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Raoul and his co-plaintiffs allege that Live Nation and Ticketmaster privately acknowledge their business benefits when brokers prevent people from purchasing tickets at prices set by the artists.

Their solution: ticket brokers.

The plaintiffs allege that Live Nation and Ticketmaster tacitly work with them to get around ticket limits and to purchase millions of dollars’ worth of tickets to extract more profit. Even when customers are initially able to purchase tickets from Ticketmaster, Raoul said they encounter mandatory fees that increase the cost by up to 30%.

Customers, meanwhile, have few alternatives. Raoul said Live Nation controls roughly 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing, with a growing share of ticket resales. Customers spent more than $82 billion on tickets through Ticketmaster between 2019 and 2024.

A separate lawsuit filed last year by Raoul and the U.S. Department of Justice accused Ticketmaster of monopolizing the live entertainment industry.

In the latest lawsuit, Raoul and the FTC were joined by the attorneys general of Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia as plaintiffs.