The name REPS & Co suddenly seems appropriate because those guys are going to need representation for their company. The San Diego-based ticket broker has been sued by the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission for allegedly profiting richly off of illegal scalping practices, The Hollywood Reporter reports.
According to the lawsuit, REPS & Co executives violated federal laws to resell tickets for more than $120 million in profit. Specifically, the company allegedly flouted the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act by opening thousands of accounts on ticketing platforms such as Ticketmaster and AXS to circumvent the platforms' purchase limits.
The complaint encompasses 18.6 million tickets purchased for about 83,500 events, including one instance where they allegedly used 1,300 accounts to snap up 7,624 seats for a single show on Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour on Oct. 1, 2023 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. The company reportedly made $833,323 off that one gig. In another similar venture, REPS & Co allegedly used 700 accounts to acquire 5,430 tickets for a Pitbull concert at Empower FCU Amphitheater near Syracuse, which led to over $120,000 in profits.
The DOJ and FTC allege that the company's business model "is predicated on identifying events for which tickets will be in high demand and buy up tickets for those events before ordinary consumers can." REPS & Co. are accused of hiring ticket buyers in the Philippines and concealing their IP addresses through VPNs and other measures. "Defendants’ actions injured consumers who otherwise may have been able to purchase those tickets in the first instance from ticket issuers at lower prices," the complaint alleges.
Last year the FTC sued the Live Nation/Ticketmaster conglomerate for allegedly colluding with aftermarket brokers, but Donald Trump personally orchestrated a settlement, to the dismay of all reasonable people and Kid Rock. We'll see if REPS & Co are friendly enough with the president to wriggle out of this one.