Connecticut’s U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal held a news briefing today to announce his submission of a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking for greater enforcement action against the use of bots by scalpers for the purpose of driving up the cost of live event ticket sales. 

“What really brings us here today are bots and scalpers,” said Sen. Blumenthal. “Bots are the Grinch that threaten to steal Christmas from a lot of holiday concertgoers, theater patrons, they want to enjoy the holiday, but scalpers and bots are putting tickets out of reach financially for hard working Americans.”

Blumenthal was joined in support by the executives of three different Connecticut theaters and concert venues; David Fay, President and CEO of the Bushnell Center of the Performing Arts in Hartford, Laurence Caso, Executive Director of the Klein Memorial Auditorium in Bridgeport, and Michael Moran, President and CEO of the Palace Theater in Stamford.

Blumenthal’s demands for greater action to be taken against scalpers are far from new. In May, Blumenthal spoke in support of the Department of Justice filing an antitrust claim against the notorious ticket reseller Ticketmaster. In 2023, Blumenthal joined Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Edward Markey (D-MA) to introduce the BOSS and SWIFT Act, in an attempt to further crack down on scalpers, though the bill died in session. 

Today Blumenthal called on the FTC specifically to use current laws on the books, specifically the 2016 BOTS (Better Online Ticket Sales) Act passed in 2016, which he claimed to have “championed” at the time of its passage, to crack down on the phenomena. The purpose of the BOTS Act was to empower the FTC to bring action against ticket-sale service that uses bots to mass purchase event tickets for resale, but Blumenthal said that it has only been invoked once by the FTC since its passage.

“The solution is better laws, but we can begin with enforcement of the laws we have on the books right now, which the FTC is failing to do,” said Blumenthal. “There’s only been one case of enforcement of the BOTTS law against the scalpers by the FTC. That is a glaring omission and failure which should be corrected by the FTC. They can do it immediately, literally, as a Christmas gift to consumers.”

The venue execs who joined Blumenthal at the conference all shared their own experiences in combating bot resellers. All three said that bot resellers threaten to damage the reputation of their businesses, limit the access and enjoyment of shows, plays and concerts, and are in direct violation of the rules and spirit of their venues.

Caso presented a thick file, containing what he said were 173 ticket orders from bot resellers for various events held at the Klein Memorial Auditorium.

“Every one of them, the information we get, is that they all go to the same California address, all under different patron names, and they’re all fake patron names,” said Caso. “We don’t know who’s really buying the tickets and who’s been impacted by this, but the price discrepancies are outrageous.”

Caso said that the first time he noticed this phenomenon impacting a concert at the Klein, he had his ushers pull aside 18 concertgoers at the end of the show so that he could speak to them. All of them told him that they thought they had purchased the tickets from the Klein’s website, not from scalpers. Caso said that some of them paid $109 for tickets that had originally cost $24, and others had paid $212 for tickets that had originally cost $59.

On the flip side, he has also had customers who have purchased legitimate tickets think they may be in trouble because they were surprised the prices were so low. 

“I also had a man come in the box office just two days ago, very concerned, because we have an artist who he really, really enjoys, and he had just bought tickets for $79 which is indeed the face value of the top ticket price,” said Caso. “He said, ‘Are these real tickets? Because I just talked to a friend of mine and he paid $300 a seat.’”

Moran shared his concern that the egregious ticket prices offered by scalpers might tarnish the reputation of his businesses.

“We own businesses that are reputable businesses,” said Moran. “We pay mortgages, we pay utilities, we employ staff, and a lot of the ticket resellers are single individuals with technology in their homes, and they are cutting into our ability to continue to do the good work we do.”

To cap off the conference, Blumenthal and Fay both called on consumers to make sure that they’re purchasing their tickets from official sources, and not just the first or second page that pops up as the sponsored results in their Google searches.

“If you have a choice between spending $50 on a ticket, or $200 on the exact same ticket, which would you rather do?,” said Fay.

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