Hi, everyone. Sportthony Sportano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well.

It's time to talk about evil corporations, specifically, ticketing giant Ticketmaster, a company that I have had the displeasure to talk about on this channel multiple times, really for years now. And look, to any real, true, blooded music fan, you already know the ticketing industry, historically, is a pretty greedy and nasty place where you've got fees and scalpers all making ticket prices more expensive than they should be. But even with concert ticket prices being as expensive as they are right now, apparently the CEO of Ticketmaster thinks they're not expensive enough.

About a week ago, this video clip of Ticketmaster boss, Michael Rapino, hit the internet where he was pretty much arguing that there's actually a much higher ceiling on concert ticket prices than we think, given that there are some people who will pay seven grand for front row courtside seats at a Knicks game. For you, music is a better business, though, than selling tickets for sports.

I always joke, sports, it's like a badge of honor to spend 70 grand for a Knicks courtside. They beat me up if we charge $800 for a Beyoncé, right? We have a lot of runway left, right? So when you read about the ticket prices going up, it's still average concert price is $72. Try going to a Laker game for that, and there's 80 of them or whatever the hell. So the concert is underpriced. - Michael Rapino

Pretty terrible look. Definitely a sign of disgusting levels of greed, but not necessarily news. Not news if you've been paying attention to the way these companies operate anyway. But here is some news because apparently the FTC is now suing Ticketmaster and Live Nation over turning a blind eye to scalpers, which honestly, when you look at some of the emails and communications that are being talked about here, is like underselling the situation. Because we're not just merely talking about Ticketmaster, ignoring an ongoing problem. That problem being allowing scalpers to abuse the fact that the Internet has basically opened the marketplace of concert ticket sales up to the entire world.

So basically, every ticket at every show at every concert is now being priced at a global market scale, not just according to what people are willing to pay for those tickets locally. And now you have scalpers who are buying tickets in mass, reselling them for higher prices. And before I go any deeper, you might want to stop me here and say, but Anthony, hold on, wait – as this thing became more of a phenomenon, we were assured by the ticket companies that they were going to be doing their best to curb scalping.

And on top of that, we also have the Better Online Ticket Sales Act to help enforce those expectations legally. Aren't we right now as concertgoers and ticket buyers protected from such things? No, actually, you're not. Ticketmaster is actually not just ignoring scalpers. In fact, they're more or less fully aware of what they're doing, helping them a little bit in some cases, and accepting their practices broadly because every single time a ticket is sold on their platform, they get a fee, and then another fee, and then another fee.

And again, it's hard to emphasize enough how cartoonishly, financially evil Ticketmaster is being in this situation because we're not simply just talking about, "Oh, can we add another fee or do this or do this other thing just marginally increase profits?" No, I'm talking about basically the financial equivalent of tying you to the train tracks and twirling the mustache while the fucking engine is rolling down the tracks.

As Ars Technica reports, from 2020 to 2024, just one broker, basically somebody who's buying a whole bunch of tickets for resale, known to Ticketmaster, managed more than 13,000 accounts to circumvent ticket limits, the FTC alleged. And again, this is according to internal documentation they are fully aware that these people, that these scalpers are operating in this way. A fact that's pretty damning once you consider that Ticketmaster currently controls 80% of primary ticketing for major concert venues.

Apparently, there's another communication here that goes into the details of exactly how all of this works. With one engineer explaining that they have a guy that hires 1,000 college kids to each buy the ticket limit of eight, giving him 8,000 tickets to resell. Then we have a guy who creates 1,000 fake accounts and uses each to buy the ticket limit of eight, giving him 8,000 tickets to resell. We say the former is legit and call him a broker while the latter is breaking the rules and is called a scalper. But from the fan perspective, we to end up with one guy reselling 8,000 tickets.

And furthermore, according to the FTC's allegations, Ticketmaster, again, was fully aware of these practices, knew that this was going on, knew that these people had found a workaround for these rules. But knowing that their profits would drop, were they going to stop these practices? They just let it continue, regardless of how many fans got ripped off in the process.

Now, I know there's going to be at least maybe a couple morons in the comments who just think like, Anthony, this is just what happens on an open market. This is capitalism. People should be allowed to buy and resell their tickets, whatever. I mean, okay, if you're an average Joe concertgoer, that's fine. I don't have any personal issue with that.

If you somehow buy three Oasis tickets for one of their reunion shows and you find that, I don't know, you can't go or that you don't need one of them and you end up reselling it for maybe 50% over what you paid, I guess, fine. I mean, maybe a little itty-bitty, tiny bit greasy on your part, but not the worst thing in the world. The practices I'm talking about here are much worse and on a much grander scale.

Because according to these FTC allegations, we're talking about $81,000 in Coldplay tickets then being flipped into $170,000 of Coldplay tickets. That's doubling your money. That's not fair. That's not sensible. That's not for the love of music. That's just pure unadulterated greed.

And with Ticketmaster and Live Nation just not stopping these scalpers in their tracks, these kinds of profits are essentially guaranteed. You're pretty much shooting fish in a barrel so long as you could buy the tickets early enough. Imagine if you could just walk into a Las Vegas casino with those kinds of odds and just double your money instantly just because you had 81 grand to throw down. So, yeah, this is just absolutely, positively fucking insane.

But I'm actually not done. Here is the worst part. Here's the craziest part. Here is the actual honest to God kicker proof for that as flagrant as Ticketmaster is being with this bullshit, they know it's wrong that there are reports floating around online of people screenshotting their browser when they go to buy concert tickets and they have to click a terms of service box that includes includes the text, including the Arbitration Agreement and Class Action Waver, updated August 2025. Meaning that by virtue of purchasing this ticket, you are waiving any ability that you may have to take part in a class action lawsuit. One that hypothetically might be seeking damages from Ticketmaster after you were gouged over concert tickets because the company allowed them to be resold several times, only for to be charged an arm and a leg at the end of this human centipede of ticket fucking bullshit.

So I'm not really sure what to say to finish this off other than fuck Ticketmaster. Fuck this company, fuck their fees, fuck everyone ignoring this, and fuck their CEO. I hope you guys get the fucking bejesus sued out of you. And to whatever extent that you can, please do not use this Satanic company and deprive them of the ability to do this to you.

I'm going to leave it there. You guys, let me know what you think about this in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano, Ticketmaster, for never.