Ticket broker REPS & Company illegally circumvents measures designed to limit the number of tickets that can be purchased for a single event, purchasing millions of tickets to high-demand events that it later resells at a huge profit, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the Federal Trade Commission.
The lawsuit alleges REPS, along with its top officials, violated the Better Online Ticket Sales Act.
Since 2022, REPS and its operators used a variety of unlawful tactics to bypass security measures from ticket issuers to exceed ticket limits set by ticket issuers, the lawsuit alleges. REPS purchased more than eight tickets for at least 83,500 events – many that were high demand and likely to sell out. REPS spent more than $1.3 billion to get over 18.5 million tickets for these events, making at least $120.8 million in profit by reselling these tickets on the secondary marketplace.
For example, REPS generated $833,000 in profit by using 1,300 accounts to purchase 7,624 tickets to one Beyonce Renaissance tour concert in Kansas City, Mo., in 2023, according to the lawsuit.
“REPS’ entire business model is focused on trying to game the ticket-purchasing system in order to obtain as many tickets as possible to resell at inflated prices to consumers,” Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
Ticket issuers such as Ticketmaster and AXS have measures to block resellers from violating ticket-purchasing limits to popular events. These security measures include ticket quantity caps and monitoring whether purchases are from verifiable accounts and unique credit cards, email addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that REPS uses a team of employees, mostly based in the Philippines, who use unlawful methods to bypass Ticketmaster and other ticket-issuer account security measures. These methods include using thousands of ticket-purchasing accounts created with names, addresses, or phone numbers belonging to someone other than the ticket purchaser and virtual credit card accounts and phone numbers controlled by REPS. In addition, they also used IP proxy services and multi-session browsers that mask the identity and location of the account user, the lawsuit alleges.
When ticket issuers detect attempts to bypass ticket limits, the issuers often block or cancel the ticket purchase. In response, REPS has developed strategies to help its employees work around these ticket limit controls, such as making slight changes to an account holder’s address or name, the lawsuit alleges. Internal company documents show that REPS officials discussed tactics to ensure their accounts won’t be blocked by ticket issuers.
