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After Ticketmaster fumbled its gross sales of Taylor Swift’s Eras stadium tour tickets earlier this month, the corporate blamed “bot assaults” and followers for the meltdown.
Now members of Congress are asking the Federal Commerce Fee whether or not it plans to implement a 2016 regulation designed to battle such “assaults.”
Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the rating member and chair, respectively, of the Subcommittee on Shopper Safety, Product Security, and Information Safety, wrote a letter Monday to the FTC asking whether or not the fee will invoke the Higher On-line Ticket Gross sales Act, or BOTS Act.
Signed into regulation in 2016, the BOTS Act offers the federal government the authority to crack down on those that misuse bots — software program purposes which can be programmed to run automated duties on-line — to purchase giant quantities of tickets for revenue. These brokers usually run ticket bots that mechanically suck up enormous swaths of tickets as quickly as they go on sale.
These tickets are then bought on third-party websites, usually for a lot greater costs. The regulation bans the resale of tickets purchased utilizing bots, and individuals who illegally promote the tickets face a $16,000 positive.
“Whereas bots will not be the one purpose for these issues, which Congress is evaluating, combating bots is a vital step in lowering shopper prices within the on-line ticketing trade,” Blackburn and Blumenthal wrote.
Peter Kaplan, a spokesman for the FTC, mentioned the company acquired the letter however declined to remark additional.
When Ticketmaster introduced it had canceled gross sales of Swift live performance tickets to the general public after a collection of presales, it blamed “the staggering variety of bot assaults in addition to followers who didn’t have invite codes,” saying that it “drove unprecedented visitors on our website, leading to 3.5 billion whole system requests — 4x our earlier peak.”
Whereas the letter pointed particularly to Ticketmaster‘s Swift debacle, the senators additionally pointed to different latest examples, equivalent to customers reportedly making an attempt to purchase tickets to see Bob Dylan carry out in Nashville this previous March, solely to be advised that the tickets of their purchasing cart now not existed. The letter additionally cited a separate incident the place 22,000 followers registered to purchase Blake Shelton tickets however just a few hundred individuals walked away with them.
The letter goes on to level to wild markups at third-party websites with some listings as excessive as $1,000 for a Bruce Springsteen live performance and $40,000 to see Adele.
“Stopping any such shopper hurt is strictly why Congress selected to enact the BOTS Act six years in the past and why we each selected to sponsor that invoice,” the letter learn.
The FTC has cracked down on people utilizing bots prior to now. This previous January, the FTC introduced it deliberate to challenge a $31-million penalty towards three New York-based ticket brokers whom the fee accused of utilizing bots to purchase up tens of hundreds of tickets for live shows and sporting occasions, then making hundreds of thousands by reselling them to followers at greater costs.
The letter acknowledged the January case, which was the primary use of the BOTS Act, however requested the FTC why it hasn’t achieved extra to implement towards different doable circumstances of bot use.
The Swift fiasco additionally reignited criticism of Ticketmaster and its mother or father firm, Dwell Nation Leisure, the world’s largest live performance promoter. The 2 firms merged in 2010, prompting fears that the ensuing firm would have a stranglehold on ticket gross sales and different components of the music enterprise.
Ticketmaster has lengthy confronted criticism for the charges it costs customers, and there was political stress for antitrust officers to become involved.
Final week, different members of Congress — Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a longtime critic of Ticketmaster and Dwell Nation, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — introduced they’d maintain a listening to on the impression of Ticketmaster’s dominant grip on the ticketing trade and “how consolidation within the stay leisure and ticketing trade harms prospects and artists alike.”
“When there isn’t a competitors to incentivize higher companies and truthful costs, all of us endure the implications,” Klobuchar mentioned.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted earlier this month that she thinks the corporate must be damaged up.
A Justice Division antitrust investigation into Dwell Nation Leisure was made public earlier this month. It seeks to find out whether or not Dwell Nation has abused its energy over the live-music trade.
In 2019, the Justice Division was gearing up for an extended authorized battle towards Dwell Nation over allegations that it coerced live performance venues into working with its Ticketmaster division.
Dwell Nation settled by agreeing to increase some phrases of its 2010 merger that have been supposed to make sure truthful competitors within the ticketing market and prohibit Dwell Nation from retaliating towards venue homeowners that determined to defect to opponents.
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