There Is Evil, and Then There Is

Ticketmaster.

In the latest case, we have the ticket selling website collaborating with scalpers to drive up prices and profits.

Why am I not surprised? 

The Federal Trade Commission sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster on Thursday, alleging that the companies tacitly worked with scalpers to profit from jacking up ticket prices on the secondary market.

As the FTC alleged in a press release, Ticketmaster's years of turning a blind eye to scalpers violated the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, costing customers "billions in inflated prices and additional fees." Further, artists' efforts to keep event costs low were repeatedly frustrated by executives' greedy bid to drive Ticketmaster revenue by reaping as many additional fees as possible, the FTC alleged.

Rather than blocking scalping, Ticketmaster allegedly provided tech support to help so-called brokers exceed "fake" ticket limits that seemingly only applied to genuine customers buying tickets to see events.

The FTC's investigation revealed that five of the biggest brokers controlled thousands of fake or purchased Ticketmaster accounts buying hundreds of thousands of event tickets and making it impossible for fans to "have a shot at buying fair-priced tickets," FTC chair Andrew Ferguson said.

………

Ticketmaster controls about 80 percent of "major concert venues’ primary ticketing" and increasingly controls "a growing share of ticket resales in the secondary market," the FTC noted.

Seemingly, Ticketmaster uses this dominant position to "triple dip" on fees, maximizing gains from events by charging fees at initial purchase, then again from both sellers and buyers on the secondary market. Ticketmaster generates most of its revenue from these fees, the FTC said, raking in over $11 billion from 2019 through 2024—nearly $4 billion of which came from resale fees.

I'm thinking that these guys, and not the public relations department of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation will be the, "Bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."