Taylor Swift & Bruce Springsteen Ticket Scandal Sees FTC Sue Reseller

Besides being American icons, chart toppers and stadium packers, what do Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen have in common?

Well, the spectacular songwriter thing aside, both the Boss and the self-styled Showgirl are at the heart of a new Donald Trump-fueled lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission today to put the kibosh on resale schemes that snare hot tickets and rip off desperate fans.

“Beginning on or around October 2016 to the present, Defendants have used illegal means to purchase hundreds of thousands of tickets from Ticketmaster for performances and events, including concerts, plays, and sporting events,” the FTC sang loud in an injunction and penalties seeking complaint against Baltimore-based Key Investment Group, its affiliates and execs. It alleges they scooped up the haul of tickets using bots, false Ticketmaster accounts and other digitally-underhanded means. “Defendants’ purchases have regularly exceeded posted ticket purchasing limits to many popular events, such as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour,” the Andrew N. Ferguson-led government agency said.

“Between November 1, 2022, and December 30, 2023, Defendants purchased at least 379,776 tickets from Ticketmaster at a cost of nearly $57,000,000. Defendants resold a portion of those tickets on secondary marketplaces for approximately $64,000,000, often charging a significant markup to consumers.”

Now, to hark to one of the song titles on superstar Swift’s upcoming The Life of Showgirl album, that’s really how you ruin a friendship.

Following up on Trump’s Executive Order this spring aiming to crackdown on concert-reselling scams, the FTC got very specific in its filing in federal court Monday with Swift and her record-breaking worldwide SRO 149 show Eras Tour, that came to an end in Vancouver last December.

From March 24, 2023, through August 20, 2023, Defendants purchased ten or more tickets to each of 38 Taylor Swift concerts for a total of 2,280 tickets. Defendants paid $744,970.29 for these tickets and resold them for $1,961,980.65, netting $1,217,010.36 in revenue. To give an example from just one Taylor Swift concert, Defendants used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets to Taylor Swift’s March 25, 2023, concert at Allegiant Stadium, dramatically exceeding The Eras Tour’s 2023 six-ticket limit. Defendants then marked up and resold these tickets, netting $119,227.21 in revenue.

The numbers were smaller for Springsteen, but the margins were still pretty large.

For a Bruce Springsteen show at MetLife Stadium on September 1, 2023, Defendants used 277 different accounts to purchase 1,530 tickets, dramatically exceeding Springsteen and the E Street Band’s four-ticket limit. Defendants marked up and resold these tickets, netting $20,900.84 in revenue.

Reps for Swift and Springsteen unsurprisingly did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on the FTC filing their clients are all over. While not a defendant in this matter, though still apparently under probe from the FTC, Ticketmaster is also all over the complaint – as is the rarely enforced Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016.

In a boss (not Bruce)-praising statement of his own Monday, FTC Chairman Ferguson said, “Today’s action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers’ purchase limits, ensuring that consumers have an opportunity to buy tickets at fair prices,” the ex-Virginia solicitor general added.

Now we all know Trump has had his share of pity parties and unseemly rages about both Springsteen and Swift over the last year or so (and before, truth be told), but the thing is this case actually isn’t much of a fence mending exercise for the singers and POTUS.

It was actually started under Joe Biden’s administration.

Supported by Swift and Springsteen in his 2020 White House bid, and in 2024 until he dropped out under duress, Biden — along with 30 state and district attorneys general, according to the DOJ — also went after Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation in early 2024 in a civil antitrust suit. That action is ongoing, though as recently as last month Ticketmaster and Live Nation hit back in a countersuit to shut the investigation down and refute the Better Online Ticket Sales Act violation claims.

Ahh, glory days.