{"id":7420,"date":"2025-08-19T08:45:57","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/taylor-swift-eras-tour-tickets-illegally-resold-says-ftc-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T08:45:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:45:57","slug":"taylor-swift-eras-tour-tickets-illegally-resold-says-ftc-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/taylor-swift-eras-tour-tickets-illegally-resold-says-ftc-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift Eras Tour Tickets Illegally Resold, Says FTC Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tF<\/span>ederal regulators say a company illegally bought thousands of tickets to Taylor Swift\u2019s Eras Tour and resold them at inflated prices for more than $1 million in profit, according to a new lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a complaint filed Monday (Aug. 18) by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the watchdog group accused ticket broker Key Investment Group LLC of using \u201cillegal means\u201d to purchase more than 379,000 event tickets on Ticketmaster, including 2,280 for Swift\u2019s record-shattering Eras concerts.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBy \u201ccharging a significant markup to consumers\u201d when reselling those tickets, attorneys for the FTC say Key Investment Group made roughly $7 million in profit \u2014 and deprived concertgoers of the chance to buy them at a fair price.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement announcing the case, FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said the agency was sending a message to \u201cunscrupulous middlemen who harm fans and jack up prices through anticompetitive methods.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cToday\u2019s action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers\u2019 purchase limits, ensuring that consumers have an opportunity to buy tickets at fair prices,\u201d Ferguson said.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, Key Investment Group said it would \u201cvigorously defend itself\u201d against a \u201cclear example of regulatory overreach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe case threatens to dismantle the secondary ticket market for live events, further consolidating power in the hands of the industry\u2019s largest monopoly,\u201d the group said.<\/p>\n

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\n\tTicketmaster and parent company Live Nation were not named in the lawsuit nor accused of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\n\tSwift\u2019s Eras Tour wrapped in December with a record-shattering haul of more than $2 billion in face-value ticket sales over a two-year run. The unprecedented demand for the tickets led to a disastrous presale in November 2022 and then created an infamously pricey resale market throughout the run.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Monday\u2019s lawsuit, the FTC says Key Investment bought at least 10 tickets to 38 different Eras Tour concerts, paying a total of $744,970.29. It then resold them on the secondary market for $1,961,980.65, netting $1,217,010.36 in profit.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt just one concert \u2014 Taylor\u2019s stop at Las Vegas\u2019 Allegiant Stadium in March 2023 \u2014 Key Investment allegedly used 49 different accounts to buy 273 tickets, a move the FTC says \u201cdramatically exceeded\u201d the six-ticket limit imposed by Ticketmaster.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo get around such limits, FTC says the group used \u201cthousands of fictitious Ticketmaster accounts,\u201d as well as proxy or spoofed IP addresses, virtual credit cards and fictitious names.<\/p>\n

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\n\tNotably, the lawsuit claims the group also used so-called SIM banks \u2014 a device holding hundreds of cellphone SIM cards commonly used by scammers to send text messages from different phone numbers. The group allegedly used the banks to receive the unique verification codes sent by Ticketmaster to thwart the use of ticket-buying bots.<\/p>\n

\n\tMonday\u2019s case was filed under the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, or BOTS Act, a 2016 statute that makes it illegal to use technology like bots to buy tickets en masse by skirting platform restrictions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBy circumventing Ticketmaster\u2019s security measures, access control systems, or other technological controls or measures to buy tickets, and then selling or offering to sell the tickets, Defendants have violated and continue to violate the [BOTS] Act,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in its response statement, Key Investment Group said the lawsuit \u201ctwisted the intent\u201d of the BOTS Act and turned it into \u201ca weapon against legitimate businesses and consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUnder the FTC\u2019s interpretation, anyone who purchases more than four tickets or uses more than one account could be deemed in violation of federal law,\u201d the group said. \u201cThat outcome is not only illogical, it is absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKey Investment Group is an active member of the National Association of Ticket Brokers (NATB), the country\u2019s largest trade lobby of ticket brokers and resellers.
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The FTC complaint \u201chighlights an important unresolved issue: How to clearly define what constitutes an illegal bot,\u201d\u00a0NATB\u2019s head attorney, Gary Adler<\/strong>,\u00a0tells Billboard<\/em> in an email. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2016, the line between innovative, widely available tools that facilitate secure transactions and software designed to cheat fans has remained blurred,\u201d\u00a0he continues, noting that \u201cupcoming proceedings are an important opportunity to draw these distinctions for regulators, the industry, and consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis isn\u2019t the first time that Swift\u2019s infamously pricey tickets led to a crackdown. Earlier this year, New York prosecutors brought criminal charges against a \u201ccybercrime crew\u201d that allegedly stole more than 900 tickets to the Eras Tour and other events and then resold them for more $635,000 in illegal profit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal regulators say a company illegally bought thousands of tickets to Taylor Swift\u2019s Eras Tour and resold them at inflated prices for more than $1 million in profit, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4941,352,6652,303,6653,3029,3028,1681,1866],"class_list":["post-7420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-eras","tag-ftc","tag-illegally","tag-lawsuit","tag-resold","tag-swift","tag-taylor","tag-tickets","tag-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}