A federal court in California has let the Federal Trade Commission and seven states' lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster stand. The order, dated 28 September 2026, denies the motion to dismiss on every single claim.
What happened
The 27-page order is signed by Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, United States District Judge, at the United States District Court for the Central District of California. It is document 127 in case 2:25-cv-08884-MEMF-MAA, filed on "09/28/26". The ruling fits in a single line: "Defendant's Motion is DENIED as to each claim." The next sentence opens the litigation calendar: "The Court will issue an Order Setting Scheduling Conference forthwith."
The plaintiffs are the FTC and seven states — Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia, the last under 15 U.S.C. § 45c(c) — in a complaint filed on 18 September 2025. The denial also covers the state-law claims: the order reasons that the six state statutes invoked run parallel to the FTC Act.
This is not a ruling on the merits, and the text says so plainly: "This Court is not deciding at this stage whether the FTC's and the states' accusations are true." What has happened is that a filter has been cleared. The complaint alleges that fees raise the total cost of a ticket by "up to 44%" (Compl. ¶ 46); the court does not treat that as established, it only writes that "a reasonable consumer would not associate '+Fees' as a 44% increase in cost." And it alleges that a senior Ticketmaster executive wrote in an internal email, copying a Live Nation address, that the companies "turn a blind eye as a matter of policy" toward brokers who breach posted limits. Allegations, not proven facts.
Why it matters
The line that matters fits in a sentence: "The BOTS Act does not preclude platforms from facing liability, and the Court will not read it as doing so." The BOTS Act does not rule out liability for platforms, and the court will not read it that way.
The reasoning turns on a single word. "Circumvent" is not defined in the statute, so the court applies its ordinary meaning and concludes that "the BOTS Act is not limited to technological circumvention": no bot-breaking software is required.
Under that reading, 15 U.S.C. § 45c(a)(1) shifts direction. It bans circumventing a security measure, access control system or other control or technological measure that a ticket issuer uses to enforce posted purchasing limits. The protected object is the limit the platform itself announces: if a per-buyer cap is published and not enforced, that cap stops being a shield and can become the subject of the breach.
For anyone selling with per-buyer limits, virtual queues or presale codes, the posted cap is no longer a marketing line — it is a checkable promise, and the one who publishes it is the one who checks it. That is where real control over resale sits, and the counterpoint to what California has just written into law.