Washington DC - A top US regulator on Thursday sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, alleging the ticketing giant conspired with brokers to inflate concert ticket prices and deceive consumers with hidden fees.

The Federal Trade Commission, along with seven states, filed the lawsuit in a California federal court, accusing the companies of allowing ticket brokers to harvest millions of tickets in violation of purchase limits, then selling them at marked-up prices.

American live entertainment "should be accessible to all of us. It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game," said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, citing President Donald Trump's executive order to protect consumers from ticket pricing abuses.

The complaint alleges Ticketmaster, which controls about 80% of major concert venue ticketing in the US, turned "a blind eye" to brokers who routinely exceeded ticket limits using thousands of fake accounts.

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From 2019 to 2024, consumers spent more than $82.6 billion purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster, the FTC said.

According to the complaint, the regulator said internal documents show Ticketmaster even provided technological support to brokers through a software platform called TradeDesk, enabling them to manage tickets purchased across multiple accounts for easier resale.

The lawsuit also targets Ticketmaster's pricing practices, alleging the company advertised ticket prices substantially lower than what consumers ultimately paid after mandatory fees and markups.

These hidden fees, which reached as high as 44% of ticket cost, totaled $16.4 billion from 2019-2024, the FTC said.

The ticketing platform previously came under fire for the handling of high-demand sales like those for Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande concerts.

Over the weekend, Grande apologized to fans after tickets for her Eternal Sunshine tour were largely snatched up by resellers, who quickly put them back on the market at a higher price.

The pop star said she was "fighting for a solution" and said, "Hopefully, we will be able to get more of these tickets into your hands instead of theirs."

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Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour sparked similar chaos in 2022, as her fans were caught in hours-long queues and affected by website crashes. Those who finally made it to the checkout found few tickets available, and those remaining were significantly marked up.

The drama even led to a Senate hearing that saw Joe Berchtold, the president and CFO of Live Nation, grilled over the company's practices, while former President Joe Biden attempted to ease the sticker shock by ordering transparency over additional fees before a ticket is purchased.