StubHub has agreed to pay $10 million to settle Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) allegations that the ticket market failed to obviously disclose the total value of tickets.
The federal company mentioned in a proposed settlement filed on Thursday that StubHub violated the FTC Act and its Rule on Unfair or Misleading Charges by “deceptively” promoting ticket costs on its web site with out clearly disclosing upfront what the whole price can be, together with all necessary charges.
In Could 2025, the FTC started requiring ticket marketplaces guarantee value transparency in any respect levels of the ticket-purchase course of. The company’s criticism alleges that after the rule went into impact, StubHub marketed its ticket costs with out disclosing the total value.
“Given StubHub’s expertise and public assist for the rule, I used to be dissatisfied to study that it was allegedly one of many rule’s first main violators,” FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson mentioned in his statement. “[…] StubHub selected to slow-walk compliance with the rule partially as a result of the NFL was about to launch its regular-season schedule. The criticism notes that the NFL schedule launch is ‘a 99th percentile visitors occasion’ for StubHub and alleges that executives determined that the aggressive benefit from deceptive shoppers outweighed the chance of being caught.”
The FTC despatched a warning letter to StubHub on Could 14, 2025, and the corporate mounted the difficulty the subsequent day.
The $10 million secured by the FTC will cowl StubHub’s three days of noncompliance with the rule and might be used to return “ill-gotten” income to shoppers by means of refunds of the charges paid to StubHub, Ferguson wrote.
“We’ve lengthy supported all-in pricing as a result of it gives readability for followers,” a StubHub spokesperson mentioned in a press release to TechCrunch. “This settlement covers a restricted variety of transactions, spanning simply three days in Could 2025, the place some listings on our website could have displayed ticket costs unique of charges. Whereas we strongly disagree with the FTC’s view of the case, we’re addressing their considerations by refunding a portion of these consumers’ charges.”
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The case in opposition to StubHub marks the FTC’s newest crackdown on ticket marketplaces. Final September, the company sued Ticketmaster and its father or mother firm, Reside Nation, for participating in unlawful ticket resale ways and deceiving shoppers about value and ticket limits. The businesses have requested a federal choose to throw out the case.
Final August, the FTC sued a Maryland-based ticket broker for allegedly utilizing illegal ways to bypass ticket buying limits for well-liked occasions, equivalent to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, after which reselling these tickets at considerably increased costs.
