December 02nd, 2022
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) demanded answers on the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) failure to enforce her bipartisan legislation, the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, and called on the FTC to do so to protect consumers. Read her op-ed in the Tennessean on why the FTC must do more to fight ticket scalpers here.
Marsha Blackburn: Breaking up Ticketmaster won't stop bots, but the FTC can
If Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift presale catastrophe taught us anything about the state of online ticket sales, it’s that the real market for live music experiences is not the market fans think they’re dealing with.
In the aftermath of the slow queues and last-minute platform crashes that left thousands of fans empty-handed, Ticketmaster blamed a combination of overwhelming demand and bot attacks.
What they failed to explain was why the verification process the company told fans to follow failed so miserably. Unsatisfied, fans and watchdogs erupted in unison with a message for Congress: it’s time to break up Ticketmaster. Congress is listening. Antitrust leads in the Senate have already promised to investigate, and advocates for both consumers and sellers are preparing for blockbuster hearings.
FTC must use its congressionally-granted authority to go after scofflaws.
The problem is that antitrust investigations won’t resolve the underlying issue that caused November’s meltdown. To do that, Washington needs to take on the bots.
In 2016, I fought for federal legislation called the Better Online Ticket Sales, or “BOTS,” Act, that made it illegal for tech savvy scalpers to use software programs (“bots”) to circumvent online sales restrictions. The law now prohibits scalpers from selling tickets purchased with bots on the secondary market and gives the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) authority to go after scalpers.
However, the FTC has only used their BOTS authority once. In January 2021 they fined three New York-based brokers more than $31 million after an investigation revealed they had used bots to suck up tens of thousands of coveted tickets before selling them on the secondary market. It was a solid win that should have deterred other shady dealers.
It didn’t. And since then, the FTC has let the bots run wild.
Without enforcement, bot operators are acting with impunity.
With more and more of our lives moving online, their inaction opens the door for scalpers to make secondary markets the only option for normal consumers.
Ticketmaster itself has suggested that scalpers can obtain 60% of the most desirable tickets by using bots to request up to 200,000 tickets a day, which they immediately re-list at a colossal markup.
In some cases, concert tickets have gone for as much as $40,000 on secondary ticket sales sites. Right now, any business balancing scarcity and popularity is vulnerable, but we should not assume that bot operators will resist entering new markets if they see an opportunity to profit.
Recently, I demanded answers from the FTC about their failure to enforce the law and their plans to get serious about bot attacks. This is the investigation Congress should focus on without delay.
Fans and artists deserve to know why the process for purchasing a concert ticket has morphed into a chaotic shakedown when we’ve already given those with the power to stop it everything they need to fight back.
Senators are requesting info from FTC chair Lina Khan on enforcement efforts against illegal bots after billions are said to have infiltrated the Eras Tour presale.
Just a week after Ticketmaster’s disastrous presale for Taylor Swift‘s The Eras Tour, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) are asking the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) how the agency plans to combat bots in the online ticketing marketplace.
In a letter sent Monday (Nov. 28), Sens. Blumenthal and Blackburn — chair and ranking member of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security, respectively — are requesting information from FTC chair Lina Khan about what steps the FTC is taking to enforce the 2016 law known as the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which was designed to crack down on the kind of illegal bots that have plagued online ticket sales for recent tours by Swift and other major stars.
That law, which “prohibits the circumvention of a security measure, access control system, or other technological control measure used online by a ticket issuer” and the sale of tickets knowingly obtained through those means, grants the FTC and state attorneys general the authority to enforce violations, according to the letter. But since the BOTS Act became law, Blumenthal and Blackburn claim the FTC has taken only a single enforcement action despite numerous incidents involving the use of bots in online ticket sales.
“Given the numerous high-profile incidents in the online ticket marketplace, it would be helpful to understand how the FTC intends to act to address such conduct going forward,” the letter reads.
Monday’s letter follows Ticketmaster’s earlier claim that the Swift debacle was caused in part by tens of millions of uninvited users and billions of bots crashing the Eras presale, forcing the company to shut down the tour’s final on-sale after more than 90% of ticketing inventory was snapped up.
In addition to the Swift debacle, in the letter Blumenthal and Blackburn point to various other recent online ticketing mishaps involving bots, including tours for Bob Dylan, Blake Shelton, Bruce Springsteen and Adele.
“While bots may not be the only reason for these problems, which Congress is evaluating, fighting bots is an important step in reducing consumer costs in the online ticketing industry,” the senators continued. They point out that the infiltration of bots, among other factors, creates an unfair environment that prevents regular fans from purchasing tickets, forcing them to resort to secondary sites where tickets are often marked up dramatically. “Some reports have found secondary ticket sales ranging from $1,000 (Bruce Springsteen) to $40,000 (Adele),” the lawmakers added.
In addition to asking whether the FTC has any “pending enforcement matters before it” with respect to the BOTS Act, Blumenthal and Blackburn are asking why only a single enforcement action has been taken to date; whether there are “obstacles preventing” the FTC from enforcing the law; and whether there are “other solutions that Congress needs to consider” to prevent bots from operating in the future.
Senator Blackburn’s legislation, the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, was signed into law in 2016.
“The Better Online Ticket Sales Act gave the FTC and state attorneys general the tools they need to crack down on parasitic online ticket bots – now they need to use them. Without adequate enforcement of this anti-consumer software, regular fans are still being unfairly priced out of seeing their favorite singer or hometown sports team. back...
Marsha Blackburn: Breaking up Ticketmaster won't stop bots, but the FTC can
If Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift presale catastrophe taught us anything about the state of online ticket sales, it’s that the real market for live music experiences is not the market fans think they’re dealing with.
In the aftermath of the slow queues and last-minute platform crashes that left thousands of fans empty-handed, Ticketmaster blamed a combination of overwhelming demand and bot attacks.
What they failed to explain was why the verification process the company told fans to follow failed so miserably. Unsatisfied, fans and watchdogs erupted in unison with a message for Congress: it’s time to break up Ticketmaster. Congress is listening. Antitrust leads in the Senate have already promised to investigate, and advocates for both consumers and sellers are preparing for blockbuster hearings.
FTC must use its congressionally-granted authority to go after scofflaws.
The problem is that antitrust investigations won’t resolve the underlying issue that caused November’s meltdown. To do that, Washington needs to take on the bots.
In 2016, I fought for federal legislation called the Better Online Ticket Sales, or “BOTS,” Act, that made it illegal for tech savvy scalpers to use software programs (“bots”) to circumvent online sales restrictions. The law now prohibits scalpers from selling tickets purchased with bots on the secondary market and gives the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) authority to go after scalpers.
However, the FTC has only used their BOTS authority once. In January 2021 they fined three New York-based brokers more than $31 million after an investigation revealed they had used bots to suck up tens of thousands of coveted tickets before selling them on the secondary market. It was a solid win that should have deterred other shady dealers.
It didn’t. And since then, the FTC has let the bots run wild.
Without enforcement, bot operators are acting with impunity.
With more and more of our lives moving online, their inaction opens the door for scalpers to make secondary markets the only option for normal consumers.
Ticketmaster itself has suggested that scalpers can obtain 60% of the most desirable tickets by using bots to request up to 200,000 tickets a day, which they immediately re-list at a colossal markup.
In some cases, concert tickets have gone for as much as $40,000 on secondary ticket sales sites. Right now, any business balancing scarcity and popularity is vulnerable, but we should not assume that bot operators will resist entering new markets if they see an opportunity to profit.
Recently, I demanded answers from the FTC about their failure to enforce the law and their plans to get serious about bot attacks. This is the investigation Congress should focus on without delay.
Fans and artists deserve to know why the process for purchasing a concert ticket has morphed into a chaotic shakedown when we’ve already given those with the power to stop it everything they need to fight back.
Senators are requesting info from FTC chair Lina Khan on enforcement efforts against illegal bots after billions are said to have infiltrated the Eras Tour presale.
Just a week after Ticketmaster’s disastrous presale for Taylor Swift‘s The Eras Tour, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) are asking the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) how the agency plans to combat bots in the online ticketing marketplace.
In a letter sent Monday (Nov. 28), Sens. Blumenthal and Blackburn — chair and ranking member of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security, respectively — are requesting information from FTC chair Lina Khan about what steps the FTC is taking to enforce the 2016 law known as the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which was designed to crack down on the kind of illegal bots that have plagued online ticket sales for recent tours by Swift and other major stars.
That law, which “prohibits the circumvention of a security measure, access control system, or other technological control measure used online by a ticket issuer” and the sale of tickets knowingly obtained through those means, grants the FTC and state attorneys general the authority to enforce violations, according to the letter. But since the BOTS Act became law, Blumenthal and Blackburn claim the FTC has taken only a single enforcement action despite numerous incidents involving the use of bots in online ticket sales.
“Given the numerous high-profile incidents in the online ticket marketplace, it would be helpful to understand how the FTC intends to act to address such conduct going forward,” the letter reads.
Monday’s letter follows Ticketmaster’s earlier claim that the Swift debacle was caused in part by tens of millions of uninvited users and billions of bots crashing the Eras presale, forcing the company to shut down the tour’s final on-sale after more than 90% of ticketing inventory was snapped up.
In addition to the Swift debacle, in the letter Blumenthal and Blackburn point to various other recent online ticketing mishaps involving bots, including tours for Bob Dylan, Blake Shelton, Bruce Springsteen and Adele.
“While bots may not be the only reason for these problems, which Congress is evaluating, fighting bots is an important step in reducing consumer costs in the online ticketing industry,” the senators continued. They point out that the infiltration of bots, among other factors, creates an unfair environment that prevents regular fans from purchasing tickets, forcing them to resort to secondary sites where tickets are often marked up dramatically. “Some reports have found secondary ticket sales ranging from $1,000 (Bruce Springsteen) to $40,000 (Adele),” the lawmakers added.
In addition to asking whether the FTC has any “pending enforcement matters before it” with respect to the BOTS Act, Blumenthal and Blackburn are asking why only a single enforcement action has been taken to date; whether there are “obstacles preventing” the FTC from enforcing the law; and whether there are “other solutions that Congress needs to consider” to prevent bots from operating in the future.
Senator Blackburn’s legislation, the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, was signed into law in 2016.
“The Better Online Ticket Sales Act gave the FTC and state attorneys general the tools they need to crack down on parasitic online ticket bots – now they need to use them. Without adequate enforcement of this anti-consumer software, regular fans are still being unfairly priced out of seeing their favorite singer or hometown sports team. back...
