“Beginning on or around October 2016 to the present, Defendants have used illegal means to purchase hundreds of thousands of tickets from Ticketmaster for performances and events, including concerts, plays, and sporting events,” the filing reads (per Deadline). The complaint alleges that Key Investment Group used bots, false Ticketmaster accounts, and other shady means to snap up tickets. “Defendants’ purchases have regularly exceeded posted ticket purchasing limits to many popular events, such as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.”
The initial struggle to get Eras Tour tickets was such a fiasco that Swift herself described her fans’ plight as going “through several bear attacks.” Apparently, Key Investment Group bears (no pun intended) part of the blame: “From March 24, 2023, through August 20, 2023, Defendants purchased ten or more tickets to each of 38 Taylor Swift concerts for a total of 2,280 tickets,” the filing states. “Defendants paid $744,970.29 for these tickets and resold them for $1,961,980.65, netting $1,217,010.36 in revenue. To give an example from just one Taylor Swift concert, Defendants used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets to Taylor Swift’s March 25, 2023, concert at Allegiant Stadium, dramatically exceeding The Eras Tour’s 2023 six-ticket limit. Defendants then marked up and resold these tickets, netting $119,227.21 in revenue.”
All told, the suit alleges that Key Investment Group snatched up more than 300,000 tickets for reselling. Though investigating the live music industry is perhaps the last true bipartisan issue—it was one of Joe Biden’s pet issues as well—FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson made sure to credit the current admin for the win. He said in a statement (via Deadline), “Today’s action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers’ purchase limits, ensuring that consumers have an opportunity to buy tickets at fair prices.”
