US sues ticket broker over alleged $1.3bn bot-buying scheme
The U.S. Justice Department has accused San Diego-based broker REPS & Co of using bots to buy 18.5 million event tickets worth more than $1.3 billion.
The 22-page complaint says the firm then realised at least $120.8 million in profit by putting those tickets back on sale. The scale covers concerts, Broadway theatre shows, college sports fixtures and other high-demand dates, according to Rolling Stone.
Prosecutors allege the company got around purchase limits for at least 83,000 events. Purchase limits cap how many tickets one buyer can order for a single event. The case was brought under the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, known as the BOTS Act, the federal law that bans using technology to bypass those caps.
Bots in this context are automated programmes that can place orders far faster than a person clicking through a sale. The complaint says REPS organised its buying across thousands of separate accounts to avoid detection and to keep ordering after an individual account would have been stopped.
The filing sets out concert-by-concert examples. For Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour date at Arrowhead Stadium on 1 October 2023, REPS allegedly used at least 1,300 accounts to buy 7,624 tickets through Ticketmaster. The limit for that show was between four and eight tickets per buyer.
The complaint says REPS made about $833,323 in profit from reselling tickets to that Kansas City concert alone. The numbers are stark. One broker operation is accused of holding thousands of seats for one night.
A second example names a Pitbull concert in Syracuse, New York, on 7 September 2024. REPS allegedly used at least 700 accounts to buy 5,430 tickets through Ticketmaster for that date. That block was nearly one-third of the capacity of the Empower Federal Credit Union Amphitheater at Lakeview.
Prosecutors allege resale profit of about $120,109 from the Syracuse show. Across the wider scheme, tickets were allegedly listed on StubHub, Vivid Seats, SeatGeek, Gametime and Ticketmaster’s resale platform. The filed complaint states that for at least 83,500 events, the defendants bought more than eight tickets, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
For fans, this means the dispute is about access to the first sale. Limits are intended to stop any single buyer from sweeping up large blocks. When those limits fail, more buyers must compete on resale sites.
The filing contains allegations only. No court has ruled on the claims. Any penalty or remedy would depend on what prosecutors prove and what the court decides.
