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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."
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