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Ticket Broker Pays BOTS Act Fine for Buying Up Tate McRae, Megan Moroney Concert Seats
The Federal Trade Commission has settled with Georgia-based ticket broker Elite Events, trading as smartscalpers.com, over allegations it used overseas agents and proxy servers to buy up more than 100,000 concert tickets for artists including Tate McRae, Megan Moroney, Benson Boone and Metallica. The case, announced on 27 July, marks a renewed US crackdown on ticket touting under the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, a 2016 law that had gone largely unenforced until President Trump ordered the FTC to pursue resellers more aggressively last year.
The FTC accused Elite Events of hiring overseas "pullers" who used fake email addresses, virtual credit cards and proxy IP addresses to evade Ticketmaster and AXS purchase limits, amassing tickets to nearly 6,000 events since 2022 before reselling them at inflated prices via StubHub, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek. Alleged hauls included over 1,000 tickets for Boone's Fireworks and Rollerblades Tour, nearly 1,600 for Moroney's Am I Okay? Tour, almost 300 for a single Metallica show and more than 400 for one McRae concert. Although the settlement sets a penalty of $10.7 million, the FTC is allowing the company to pay just $300,000 owing to its limited finances; Elite Events admitted no wrongdoing, and the ruling follows separate 2025 BOTS Act actions against broker Key Investment Group and Ticketmaster itself.
In short
- FTC settles BOTS Act case against broker Elite Events/smartscalpers.com
- Alleged 100,000+ tickets bought via fake identities and proxy servers
- $10.7m penalty reduced to $300,000 due to firm's finances
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Enforcement of the BOTS Act protects consumers from systematic ticket scalping enabled through deception and automated systems. Companies deliberately using fake identities, proxy servers and overseas agents to circumvent purchase limits harm ordinary fans seeking fair access to entertainment. Rigorous FTC enforcement upholds consumer protections and ensures tickets reach genuine fans rather than professional resellers exploiting the system.
The case against
Enforcement focused on smaller resellers is strategically misguided when the fundamental problem is Ticketmaster's monopolistic control of ticketing infrastructure. Ticket resale is a legitimate market function, and penalties appear disproportionate to actual consumer harm. Regulatory resources would be better spent dismantling barriers to competition rather than penalising business operators attempting to function in an unfairly structured marketplace.
Explained simply
Ticket scalping—the practice of bulk-buying tickets and reselling them at inflated prices—has long frustrated music fans seeking to attend concerts at face value. Scalpers use various tricks to bypass purchase limits set by ticketing platforms, allowing them to amass huge quantities of tickets for popular events that they then resell at significant mark-ups.
In response, the United States passed the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act in 2016, which makes it illegal to use automated tools and other technological methods to circumvent ticket-purchasing limits. The law specifically targets the use of bots, fake accounts and similar tactics that scalpers employ to outwit ticketing systems.
For nearly a decade, the BOTS Act went largely unenforced, but this changed when the Trump administration instructed the Federal Trade Commission last year to pursue ticket resellers more aggressively. This shift has prompted a series of enforcement actions against major ticket brokers and platforms, reflecting a renewed governmental focus on protecting fans from scalping schemes.