A federal judge has allowed the FTC’s lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, to proceed. The ruling means the agency’s allegations are legally sufficient for the next stage of litigation; it does not establish that they are true. It also rejects Ticketmaster’s argument that the BOTS Act applies only to individual resellers and not ticketing platforms.

The FTC alleges that Ticketmaster let brokers evade ticket limits using hundreds or thousands of accounts with fake names, then resell tickets through its secondary market, generating resale fees. The judge cited allegations that the companies knew about the practices and could have curbed them, and also allowed the FTC’s claim about checkout fees to proceed, saying “plus fees” could be ambiguous. Ticketmaster denies wrongdoing and says the case will fail; the case now moves to evidence discovery and could go to trial unless settled.