Two tickets at $245 apiece. Subtotal: $490. Total at checkout: $662.21.
That’s the example the Federal Trade Commission picked for its complaint against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. According to the complaint, $60.96 of the gap was tax and $111.04 was mandatory fees: “a $45.20 service fee on each ticket, a $6.00 facility charge on each ticket, and an order processing fee of $8.85.” Do the math and those three fees come to $111.25, which is also what’s left of the $662.21 once you take out the tickets and the tax. These fees are hard to add up even for the people suing over them. The only heads-up on the way to checkout, the FTC says, was two words in small print next to the list price: “+ Fees”.
On September 28, 2026, a federal judge in Los Angeles refused to toss the case. Her answer to the “+Fees” defense takes one sentence:
“+Fees” is vague and ambiguous.
Minnesota didn’t wait for a federal judge. The Legislature banned the move outright in 2024, and the ban has covered every ticket sold here since January 1, 2025.
What did the court actually decide?
The case is FTC v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-08884-MEMF-MAA (C.D. Cal.). The FTC and seven states (Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia) filed it on September 18, 2025. Minnesota isn’t one of them. The complaint accuses Ticketmaster of advertising prices it didn’t charge and ticket limits it didn’t enforce, and of reselling tickets that brokers got by blowing through those limits, which the FTC says violates the Better Online Ticket Sales Act.
Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong denied the motion to dismiss on every claim. Order Denying Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 127.
Now, what this ruling does and does NOT mean. The judge said it herself, in plain English, before she got to any law:
This Court is not deciding at this stage whether the FTC’s and the states’ accusations are true.
A motion to dismiss asks one question: if everything in the complaint is true, is that a violation? The court said yes. Nobody’s proved a thing. Live Nation and Ticketmaster answered on October 13, 2026, calling the suit “misguided” and stating that “Ticketmaster now employs all-in pricing consistent with the Commission’s rules”. ECF No. 135, at 2, 5. Notice the now. The court’s set a scheduling conference for October 29. The fight over what actually happened hasn’t started.
What the order does settle is which legal arguments are dead on arrival. Several are.
Showing the total at checkout doesn’t fix it. The defense’s point was that the full price showed up before anybody paid. Not good enough, the court said, quoting a 1975 Ninth Circuit case: “The Federal Trade Act is violated if it induces the first contact through deception, even if the buyer later becomes fully informed before entering the contract.” Order at 14. The low number that got you to click is the deception. Everything after that’s cleanup.
A plus sign isn’t a disclosure. That’s where “+Fees” died. The court went on: “Even if it puts consumers on notice that fees will be included on every ticket, it does not put them on notice of the fee amount, which can be significant.” Order at 15. The court read the complaint as alleging that fees pushed the total “up to 44%”, Order at 14, and it wasn’t buying the idea that a plus sign covers that: “a reasonable consumer would not associate “+Fees” as a 44% increase in cost.“ Order at 15 n.3. I wouldn’t either.
One more passage didn’t so much knock out an argument as flip it.
Their excuse for waiting backfired. This is the part I’d frame. The companies said they didn’t move to all-in pricing sooner because, as the court summarized it, “if they implemented all-in pricing while their competitors did not, this would shift sales to their competitors as consumers went to the platforms where the advertised upfront price was lower.” The court’s response: “Live Nation and Ticketmaster basically admit this.” Order at 15.
Read that excuse again. The low sticker price worked. It worked so well that showing the real price would’ve sent customers to the competition. In a deception case, that’s usually the plaintiff’s argument.
So what’s drip pricing, and why does it work so well?
The FTC put it in one line when it adopted its fee rule: “lure in consumers with a low price, then hit them with a higher price after they have invested in the transaction”. 90 Fed. Reg. 2066, 2067 (Jan. 10, 2025). The fees drip in as you go.
It works because by the time the real number shows up, you’ve picked your seats, there’s a countdown clock on the screen, and starting over means losing them. The complaint describes exactly that clock on the checkout page. Compl. ¶ 43. Nobody who designed the fee is surprised by it. The complaint quotes Ticketmaster’s own president telling colleagues in 2022 that “the sticker shock at the end is the problem.” Order at 4. That’s an allegation, not a finding. It’s also hard to forget.
The bots ruling is bigger than the headlines
The BOTS Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45c(a)(1), makes it unlawful “to circumvent a security measure, access control system, or other technological control or measure on an Internet website or online service that is used by the ticket issuer to enforce posted event ticket purchasing limits”. It also bars selling a ticket obtained that way if the seller “participated directly in or had the ability to control” the circumvention or “knew or should have known” about it.
Live Nation’s position was that the statute protects platforms from scalpers and you can’t turn it around on the platform. The court didn’t buy it:
The BOTS Act does not preclude platforms from facing liability, and the Court will not read it as doing so.
Order at 21. The rest of the order backs that sentence up.
The ticket-quantity drop-down menu counts as “a technological measure within the BOTS Act.” Order at 19 n.5. You don’t have to hack anything to circumvent it. The defense wanted the narrow decrypt-and-bypass definition from copyright law, and the court said Congress didn’t put that in this statute, so “the BOTS Act is not limited to technological circumvention.” Order at 20. A broker who “routinely create[s] hundreds or thousands of Ticketmaster accounts, often using fictitious names, email addresses, and other required information” has, on these allegations, circumvented. Order at 21. And Ticketmaster can “sell” a resale ticket without owning it, because the plain meaning of “sell” doesn’t require possession. Order at 22–23. Even if it did, the court said, Ticketmaster voids the original ticket, reissues a new one, and collects fees on the deal. That’s more than just running a platform. Order at 23.
Pleading stage, again. But the defense’s big legal theory, that a platform sits categorically outside the statute, didn’t make it out of the motion.
Minnesota got there first
Minnesota’s ticket law is Minn. Stat. § 325F.676, enacted as 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 94. The governor signed it May 7, 2024. By its terms it’s “effective January 1, 2025, and applies to tickets sold on or after that date.”
The FTC’s fee rule, 16 C.F.R. part 464, wasn’t published until January 10, 2025, and didn’t take effect until May 12, 2025. So Minnesota had its rule on the books eight months before the feds finished theirs, and in force more than four months before theirs kicked in.
And ours is tougher. Here’s the core of it, subdivision 2(a):
An operator, ticket reseller, or online ticket marketplace must, at all times during the ticket listing and purchasing process, disclose in an easily readable and conspicuous manner and in dollars:
(1) the total cost of the ticket, inclusive of all fees and surcharges that must be paid in order to purchase the ticket;
(2) the portion of the ticket price that represents a service charge; and
(3) any other fee or surcharge charged to the purchaser.
“At all times.” Not just at checkout. Not hiding behind a drop-down caret. From the first listing on.
Subdivision 2(b) shuts the drip off at the tap:
The price of a ticket must not increase with respect to a particular person after the ticket is first displayed to the person, excluding reasonable fees for the delivery of nonelectronic tickets based on the delivery method selected by the purchaser and any additional purchases made by the purchaser, which must be disclosed prior to accepting payment.
The same paragraph says the fee breakdown “must not be presented more prominently or in the same or larger size than the total price.” The total is the headline and the fees are the fine print. That’s exactly backwards from the screen the FTC describes.
Side by side:
| Minn. Stat. § 325F.676 | 16 C.F.R. part 464 | |
|---|---|---|
| In force | January 1, 2025 | May 12, 2025 |
| When the total must appear | “at all times during the ticket listing and purchasing process” (subd. 2(a)) | In “any offer, display, or advertisement that represents any price” (§ 464.2(b)) |
| Service charge broken out | Yes, in dollars (subd. 2(a)(2)) | Excluded fees disclosed before the consumer consents to pay (§ 464.2(c)) |
| Price creep after first display | Banned, except disclosed nonelectronic delivery fees and add-ons (subd. 2(b)) | No equivalent sentence |
| Who enforces | Commissioner of commerce (subd. 5) | The FTC |
The federal rule doesn’t knock out Minnesota’s. Section 464.4(b) says a state law isn’t inconsistent with it “if the protection such statute, regulation, order, or interpretation affords any consumer is greater”. I’ve walked through how that plays out for Minnesota’s general junk fee law, and the same logic covers tickets.
Minnesota wrote its own bots-and-brokers rules, too
Subdivision 3 of § 325F.676 reads like somebody had the FTC’s complaint open on the desk. A person must not “circumvent any portion of the process for purchasing a ticket on the Internet or for admission to a place of entertainment, including but not limited to security or identity validation measures or an access control system”, and must not “disguise the identity of a purchaser for the purpose of purchasing a number of tickets for admission to a place of entertainment that exceeds the maximum number of tickets allowed for purchase by a person.” Subd. 3(c).
That second clause is the fake-account play, named in a statute. Subdivision 3(d) bars selling a ticket obtained that way if the seller “participated in or had the ability to control” the conduct or “knew that the ticket was acquired in violation”. One difference: the federal statute adds “should have known”. Minnesota’s knowledge prong, on its face, requires actual knowledge.
The statute also kills speculative ticketing, which is selling seats you don’t have yet. A reseller or marketplace can’t advertise or sell a ticket before it’s available to the public “without first obtaining permission from the place of entertainment and having actual or constructive possession of the ticket,” subd. 3(a)(5), and no operator, marketplace, or reseller may sell a ticket unless it has possession or constructive possession or “a written contract with the place of entertainment to obtain the ticket”, subd. 3(e). It bans selling the same ticket twice, subd. 3(a)(1), and makes resellers deliver proof of purchase “within 24 hours of the purchase,” subd. 2(d).
Two limits on scope. The disclosure duties in subdivision 2(a) through (d) only apply to someone whose “annual aggregate transactions” reach $5,000. Subd. 2(f). And movie theaters aren’t a “place of entertainment” under the definitions, subd. 1(h), so the multiplex is somebody else’s problem.
Can a Minnesota fan actually sue?
Not under § 325F.676 by itself. Subdivision 5 says “The commissioner may enforce this section under section 45.027.” That’s the Department of Commerce. The section gives you no private right of action, and it isn’t on the private attorney general statute’s list, Minn. Stat. § 8.31, subd. 1. That list names “section 325F.67 and other laws against false or fraudulent advertising” and “the Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act (sections 325F.68 to 325F.70)”. Whether a ticket-pricing statute counts as one of those “other laws” is something you’d have to argue.
The Consumer Fraud Act is on the list, and that’s where the private claim lives. It makes unlawful “any fraud, unfair or unconscionable practice, false pretense, false promise, misrepresentation, misleading statement or deceptive practice, with the intent that others rely thereon in connection with the sale of any merchandise”. Minn. Stat. § 325F.69, subd. 1. “Merchandise” includes “intangibles” and “services.” § 325F.68, subd. 2.
A listing price that isn’t the price is a misleading statement made so you’ll rely on it. That’s my reading. Section 325F.676 doesn’t say a violation of it is automatically a Consumer Fraud Act violation, so that link has to be argued. But Minnesota’s ticket statute is the clearest evidence you could ask for of what the Legislature thinks is misleading in a ticket sale.
Two doors open from there. Section 8.31, subd. 3a, lets “any person injured by a violation of any of the laws referred to in subdivision 1” sue for damages, “together with costs and disbursements, including costs of investigation and reasonable attorney’s fees”. The catch is Ly v. Nystrom, 615 N.W.2d 302, 314 (Minn. 2000), where the Minnesota Supreme Court held that the statute “applies only to those claimants who demonstrate that their cause of action benefits the public.” The second door came in 2023: § 325F.70, subd. 3, lets “a consumer injured by a violation of sections 325F.68 to 325F.70, in connection with a sale of merchandise for personal, family, household, or agricultural purposes,” recover damages and attorney fees, and it answers the Ly question in its own text: “An action brought under this section benefits the public.” A “consumer” is a natural person or family farmer.
Concert tickets are about as personal-purpose as a purchase gets. We go deeper on how § 8.31 works and on which consumer statutes actually pay elsewhere.
The fee-shifting is what makes this real. One fan’s loss on one order might be about $111. Nobody hires a lawyer over $111. A statute that makes the seller cover the fan’s attorney fees changes that math, and it’s the reason these claims get brought at all.
What should you save?
The Minnesota rule turns on what you saw and when. Section 325F.676 bans a price increase “after the ticket is first displayed to the person”. So the first screen is your evidence.
- A screenshot of the search results or seat map showing the listed price, before you click anything. That’s the “first displayed” price.
- A screenshot of every checkout screen, including any fee breakdown you had to expand. If the total moved between screens, the sequence proves it.
- The order confirmation and the reseller’s proof of purchase. A reseller owes you one within 24 hours, and it has to include the refund policy.
- The posted ticket limit, if you got shut out of an onsale and later saw the same seats on resale at a markup.
- Your card statement, because the charge is your damages number.
Screenshots taken that day beat memory every time. A phone photo of your laptop screen is fine. Deleting the email because you were mad isn’t.
The California case is just getting to the scheduling stage. You don’t have to wait for it. Minnesota’s rule has been in the statute book since 2024, and it says it plainer than the order did: the first price you see is supposed to be the price.
Madgett Law, LLC represents Minnesota consumers in deceptive pricing and consumer fraud claims under the Consumer Fraud Act and the private attorney general statute, in state and federal court. If you were charged more for a ticket than the price you were shown, send us a message. Related reading: Minnesota’s junk fee law says “include,” not “disclose” and when a credit card surcharge is legal.
Sources: Order Denying Motion to Dismiss and Granting Request for Judicial Notice and Denying Request for Incorporation by Reference, FTC v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-08884-MEMF-MAA (C.D. Cal. Sept. 28, 2026), ECF No. 127, at 2 (“not deciding at this stage whether the FTC’s and the states’ accusations are true”), 4 (alleged “sticker shock” statement), 6–7 (plaintiffs; filing date Sept. 18, 2025), 14 (first-contact rule quoting Resort Car Rental Sys., Inc. v. FTC, 518 F.2d 962, 964 (9th Cir. 1975); alleged increase “up to 44%”), 15 (“+Fees” is vague and ambiguous; the companies’ explanation of their all-in pricing history), 15 n.3 (“a reasonable consumer would not associate “+Fees” as a 44% increase in cost“), 19 n.5 (drop-down menu as a technological measure), 20 (circumvention not limited to technological circumvention), 21 (accounts allegation; “The BOTS Act does not preclude platforms from facing liability”), 22–23 (plain meaning of “sell” does not require possession; alternative ground: voiding, reissue, and fees), 27 (motion denied as to each claim), RECAP archive on CourtListener. Complaint, id., ECF No. 1, ¶¶ 43–46 ($245 list price, $662.21 total, $60.96 tax, $111.04 in mandatory fees as stated, itemized as $45.20 and $6.00 per ticket plus $8.85, which sums to $111.25; countdown clock; “+ Fees”) — allegations, not findings. Defendants’ Answer to Complaint and Affirmative Defenses, id., ECF No. 135 (Oct. 13, 2026), at 2 (“Plaintiffs’ lawsuit is misguided”), 5 (“Ticketmaster now employs all-in pricing consistent with the Commission’s rules”). Order Setting Scheduling Conference, id., ECF No. 128 (conference Oct. 29, 2026). 15 U.S.C. § 45c(a)(1)(A)–(B) (BOTS Act), Cornell Legal Information Institute. Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 90 Fed. Reg. 2066, 2067 (Jan. 10, 2025) (definition of drip pricing; effective May 12, 2025); 16 C.F.R. §§ 464.2(b)–(c), 464.4(b), eCFR. Minn. Stat. § 325F.676, subd. 1(h) (movie theaters excluded), subd. 2(a) (total cost “at all times”), 2(b) (prominence; no price increase after first display), 2(d) (proof of purchase within 24 hours), 2(f) ($5,000 threshold), subd. 3(a)(1), 3(a)(5), 3(c), 3(d), 3(e) (duplicate tickets; speculative ticketing; circumvention and disguised identity; knowing sale; possession), subd. 5 (enforcement by the commissioner of commerce); 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 94, § 1 (signed May 7, 2024; effective January 1, 2025, for tickets sold on or after that date). Minn. Stat. § 8.31, subd. 1 (designated statutes) and subd. 3a (private remedies). Minn. Stat. § 325F.68, subd. 2 (“merchandise”); § 325F.69, subd. 1 (unlawful practices); § 325F.70, subd. 3 (consumer private enforcement; “benefits the public”; “consumer” defined), as amended by 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 52, art. 19, § 15. Ly v. Nystrom, 615 N.W.2d 302, 314 (Minn. 2000) (public-benefit requirement under § 8.31, subd. 3a). Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes for all Minnesota statutes and session laws.
This article is general legal information about Minnesota and federal law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. It describes a pending case between other parties; the allegations described are unproven, and the court’s order decides only that the complaint states a claim. Nothing here predicts the outcome of that case or of any claim on your facts, and no outcome is promised or implied.