National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) Urges New FTC Ticket-Scalper Investigations Under the BOTS Act

The National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) is officially urging the FTC to launch additional BOTS Act investigations into alleged ticket-scalping operations. Photo Credit: NITO

Nearly eight years after the BOTS Act became law, the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) is urging the FTC to investigate alleged “widespread” violations of the anti-scalping measure.NITO reached out with word of its formal complaint, which arrives almost four years following the first charges under the BOTS Act. Full title the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, the law has seemingly failed to produce any additional charges in the interim.

But scalping (and runaway ticket prices generally) has, of course, hardly ceased to be an issue for fans both in the States and abroad. Following BOTS Act enforcement scrutiny in 2022, 2023 saw the introduction of expanded federal ticketing legislation, the Fans First Act.

However, the newer bill (which would, among other things, strengthen the BOTS Act with a web portal for FTC scalping complaints) is still tied up in committee. Consequently, it’s under the existing law that NITO is urging the government agency to spearhead investigations.

Far from calling for those investigations based on unspecific claims about vague problems like expensive tickets, the organization in its letter to FTC chair Lina M. Khan rather directly named a number of the companies allegedly responsible for selling tech used to violate the BOTS Act.As described by NITO, it identified the companies when attending 2024’s National Association of Ticket Brokers-organized World Ticket Conference. At the Nashville happening, NITO allegedly “observed a sold-out exhibition hall filled with vendors selling and marketing products designed to bypass security measures for ticket purchases.”

Without mentioning the vendors’ names here – few if any of the businesses are regularly part of industry conversations – NITO narrowed down the alleged violations (and the culprits) to five main categories. Each complete with a thorough explanation of how the appropriate tools factor into scalping schemes, these categories are browser extensions, VPNs, virtual credit card services, data scraping tools, and “comprehensive resale platforms.”

Where, then, should rightsholders and especially the FTC go from here? Per NITO’s recommendations, subpoenaing customer lists from the above-described types of companies and prioritizing “investigations into large-scale ticket reselling operations, focusing on those using multiple technologies to circumvent purchasing limits” are good starting points.Also recommended are bolstered FTC and rightsholder collaborations with leading ticket platforms “to identify patterns of behavior” suggesting BOTS Act violations, updated legislation, “a public awareness campaign to educate consumers about the negative impacts of scalping,” anti-bot tech development, a push for stricter high-volume-seller verification processes on resale sites, and related collaborations with global regulatory bodies.

Time will tell whether NITO’s effort leads to concrete results. As things stand, one needn’t search far to find customers’ ticket-price qualms – Green Day has now tagged out Oasis in that hot seat. And passes are already on sale for the 2025 World Ticket Conference, which is set to take place in late July.