US accuses ticket broker of making $120.8m by dodging sales limits
Federal prosecutors say a San Diego ticket broker built a $120.8 million profit by sidestepping the rules meant to give ordinary fans a fair shot. The US Department of Justice has sued REPS & Company and three executives, alleging they bypassed purchase limits to stockpile millions of tickets for resale. The case centres on shows by Beyoncé, Post Malone and Pitbull, among tens of thousands of other events.
The lawsuit was filed on 15 October in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, following a referral from the Federal Trade Commission, according to the US Department of Justice. It names chief executive Ryan Pancheri, president Brian Archibald and chief operating officer Nicholas Totagrande alongside the company. The action is brought jointly by the Justice Department and the trade commission under the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, the federal law that bans using software to get around ticket limits.
The complaint alleges REPS spent more than $1.3 billion to amass over 18.5 million tickets between January 2022 and October 2025. In that period, it bought more than eight tickets, a common per-buyer cap, to at least 83,000 events. Resales allegedly left the firm with at least $120.8 million in profit, according to details reported by Music Business Worldwide.
Prosecutors point to two concerts to show the scale. For Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour date at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on 1 October 2023, REPS allegedly used at least 1,300 accounts to buy 7,624 Ticketmaster tickets, then made about $833,323 reselling them. For a Pitbull concert at the Empower FCU Amphitheater in Syracuse on 7 September 2024, the firm allegedly used at least 700 accounts to buy 5,430 tickets for a profit of about $120,109.
REPS is described in court papers as a broker, a business that buys tickets from official issuers and sells them on to consumers. The complaint alleges the company ran thousands of purchasing accounts across Ticketmaster, AXS and other ticketing sites, with most purchasers based in the Philippines. Federal officials also allege the use of bots, automated software that can complete checkouts faster than a person clicking through, as reported by Rolling Stone.
The claims are allegations. No court has ruled on whether REPS broke the law. For fans, the dispute is about access at the checkout. Limits of, say, four or eight tickets per buyer are set to stop one seller sweeping up rows before others can pay. The government argues those limits were defeated at scale.
