Washington, D.C.’s Apex Building, which serves as the headquarters of the FTC. Photo Credit: Harrison Keely
The FTC is “belatedly, selectively, arbitrarily, and unequally enforcing the BOTS Act” in its lawsuit against Live Nation – at least according to the Ticketmaster parent, which is once again firing back against the complaint.
Live Nation took aim at the action in an amended answer, following a fruitless dismissal attempt as well as the FTC’s more recent demand for a jury trial. As many know from DMN’s in-depth coverage, the promoter and Ticketmaster are accused of allowing “ticket brokers to exceed ticket limits” and then enabling the same brokers to “list the unlawfully purchased tickets” for resale.
And the purported conduct allegedly “drives up the price of tickets and leaves ordinary fans unable to access the finite pool of tickets available at their face value,” according to the suit, which, besides the FTC, counts as plaintiffs seven states.
Meanwhile, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have been refuting the claims from the outset – including by arguing that the BOTS Act is designed “to combat scalpers who use bots and other technological exploits to circumvent ticket issuers’ safeguards…not to penalize ticket companies” themselves.
This same position is front and center in the defendants’ just-filed amended answer, complete with a few interesting affirmative-defense changes.
Keeping the focus on new text here – we broke down the original answer in mid-October – the claims are said to be barred because the FTC is allegedly “belatedly, selectively, arbitrarily, and unequally enforcing the BOTS Act and the FTC Act against” Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Furthermore, it’s the conduct of others, “including scalpers and bot operators,” that caused the alleged damage, per the legal text, which also points to Live Nation’s purported “good faith and lack of willfulness” as factors that the court will take into consideration.
Additionally, “from the enactment of the BOTS Act in 2016, until the instant action, the FTC has never brought an enforcement action against a ticketing platform under the statute,” Live Nation and Ticketmaster vented.
Plus, on the restitution front, the defendants drew attention to the alleged “inability to sufficiently trace secondary ticket transactions to primary ticket purchases allegedly made on the Ticketmaster platform in violation of the BOTS Act.”
With that, it’ll be worth continuing to closely monitor the courtroom confrontation, which shows few signs of resolving at present. Despite this point as well as Live Nation’s other legal and regulatory woes, investors don’t appear particularly concerned, however.
In fact, August saw Live Nation (NYSE: LYV), which last month inked a new contract with CEO Michael Rapino, crack an all-time-high stock price of $189 per share. And while LYV subsequently dipped, Morgan Stanley, BTIG, UBS, and others are anticipating a jump well past the $200 mark.
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