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Could UK Class Actions Put a Stop to Ticketmaster’s Price-Gouging?

April 18, 2023

Could UK Class Actions Put a Stop to Ticketmaster’s Price-Gouging?

The following piece was contributed by Tom Davey, Co-Founder and Director at Factor Risk Management. News of another class-action lawsuit against Ticketmaster comes as little surprise, given the company’s long history of legal disputes both in the UK and North America. Described by US senator Richard Blumenthal as a “monopolistic mess”, the company has been beset with criticism and legal action ever since merging with events promoter and venue operator Live Nation in 2010. The combined entity controls around 70% of the live venue and ticketing marketplace, a situation which many believe it exploits at the expense of its customers. The latest class-action suit, filed by a Canadian law firm, centres on the alleged price-gouging of ticket sales for an upcoming concert by rap superstar Drake. A Montreal man purchased two “Official Platinum” tickets for Drake’s show on 14th July, believing it was the only date he would be performing at the Bell Centre. Having paid $789.54 for each ticket, he then discovered the next day that a second show had been added, with the same tickets each costing $350 less than what he had paid. The suit claims that Ticketmaster had been deceptive in not announcing both dates at the same time and had intentionally withheld the information about a second show to manipulate fans into overpaying. Further, the suit alleges that the tickets sold as “Official Platinum” were simply ordinary tickets relabelled as premium in bad faith. As such, compensation of the difference between the prices paid and the cheaper-priced identical tickets is being sought, as well as punitive damages of $300 for each affected customer. While collective actions are not easy to mount in North America, plaintiffs are bolstered by the fact that juries there tend to be more claimant-friendly than in other jurisdictions, including by awarding significant damages when finding in their favour. Beneficial costs rules also make such legal actions easier to bring, making the conditions sufficiently clement for group claims to proceed to trial. By contrast, the system in the UK remains more austere, operating under an unclear, unpredictable and complex regime, whether in the High Court or in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). However, there is an increasing trend of lawyers at North American firms with a UK presence, or vice versa, noticing the direction of travel set by their colleagues in the US and exploring similar actions, subject to the limitations of their respective jurisdiction. As such, Ticketmaster’s various legal issues in North America may well prove a precursor for similar UK-based claims. The current class-action facing Ticketmaster is just the latest in a series of lawsuits brought against the company for claims including price fixing and anti-competitive behaviour. The company also faced severe criticism after introducing a “dynamic pricing” model in the UK last year. Already in use in its US sales operations, the system replaces fixed-price tickets with tickets that fluctuate in price based on demand, with critics seeing the model as yet another example of Ticketmaster abusing its dominance of the market to extract even more profit from a captive consumer base. The company’s legal woes are not limited to issues over the pricing of its tickets. Following a data breach affecting 1.5m UK customers in 2018, Ticketmaster settled out of court in relation to a 40,000-strong group claim. However, the £1.25m penalty notice issued by the ICO did not confer compensation to the affected individuals, nor was it binding by the court. In any event, given the seriousness of the breach, in which personal and banking information was stolen and misused, resulting in over 60,000 bank cards being fraudulently used, such a small fine would have had little effect as a deterrent. With global revenues of over $9 billion, it is evident that large companies like Ticketmaster are able to flout the rules with limited financial impact. With little meaningful regulatory or court enforcement against the firm, Ticketmaster continues to operate with impunity, safe in the knowledge that its ballooning profits will exceed any financial penalties imposed for any wrongdoing it carries out. There are clouds on the company’s horizon, however, with US Senators earlier this year calling on the Justice Department to investigate what they called “anticompetitive conduct” by Ticketmaster in relation to its sales. Their call to arms followed a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in February, which had convened to investigate the lack of competition in the ticketing industry and what they saw as the unfair dominance of Ticketmaster in the sector. The Senate inquiry had been prompted in part by the well-publicized fiasco surrounding ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s upcoming five-month tour. Ticketmaster’s website crashed during the sales process, stranding customers in line for “presale” tickets for hours, and eventually leading to the cancellation of the public sale. Instead, the only tickets available for purchase were listed on resale sites at sky-high prices, despite Ticketmaster’s promises to weed out scalpers, bots and resale firms from its original sales process.  A class action lawsuit duly followed the debacle, as well as reports that the Justice Department had already opened an antitrust investigation into the firm. Politicians were quick to echo the concerns of affected customers, while Tennessee’s attorney general announced a consumer protection investigation into the company after being deluged with complaints from residents of the state. Should the claims of antitrust practices be confirmed by the Justice Department, there is a high likelihood that legal teams in the UK would then explore a potential claim against the company via the CAT. This would be a lengthy, expensive and high-risk process, with any cases brought via such route needing third-party funding in order to see their way to fruition. While group actions such as the Canadian lawsuit currently facing Ticketmaster can be complex processes to negotiate, court-awarded compensation is a far more effective tool in curbing corporate malpractice when compared with the modest fines which regulators can levy. If UK law firms are to follow the lead of their North American counterparts, Ticketmaster may finally pay the price for price-gouging.

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Owner-Operators Join the Push for Funding Disclosure as Ohio’s Law Takes Effect

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has added its voice to the trucking industry's campaign for mandatory disclosure of third-party litigation funding, arguing that defendants in nuclear verdict cases should be told who is financing the claims against them.

As reported by Land Line, OOIDA wants outside funding of lawsuits disclosed as a matter of course rather than contested case by case. The association's position puts owner-operators and small fleets alongside the larger carriers that have driven the disclosure debate to date, and reframes it as a concern for the smallest operators rather than only for well-capitalised defendants.

The piece, written by Keith Goble, is pegged to Ohio's new funding law, which takes effect on 6 October. The statute requires disclosure of third-party litigation funding agreements and bars funding from foreign governments, foreign corporations and foreign investors outright. State Representative Meredith Craig, a Smithville Republican, said that "for too long, foreign actors have profited off Ohio citizens."

Michigan is moving on a broader measure. House Bill 5281 would require disclosure of funding agreements, establish a registration regime for funders operating in the state, prohibit commissions, referral fees and other payments between funders and attorneys or healthcare providers, and bar foreign entities from financing Michigan litigation. State Representative Mike Harris, a Waterford Republican, described the current arrangements as "shadow cash" moving through the civil justice system.

The article does not put a figure on how much outside capital is financing trucking claims, which remains the central gap in the industry's argument for disclosure.

Commercial

Rugby Brain Injury Claimants Face £2.8m Costs Bill as Court Blames Former Firm’s Approach

Claimants in the long-running rugby brain injury litigation have been left with a £2.8 million costs bill payable to the defendants by the end of October, with no clarity yet on who will actually pay it.

As reported by NR Times, Senior Master Cook attributed the delays that generated the costs to what he described as the "contradictory and misguided approach" taken by Rylands Garth, the firm that originally ran the group action. KP Law has since taken over the claimants' case and must meet outstanding disclosure obligations by 31 October.

The litigation is funded in full by Asertis, which has financed the entire action over six years, including the neurological testing required to establish each claimant's condition. The report notes that it remains unclear whether the £2.8 million falls to the funder, the former firm, or the claimants themselves, a question with direct consequences for a claimant group that includes seven rugby union players who have died since the action began.

Hundreds of claimants have already been struck off the group register as the case has progressed, and Paul Downes KC has warned of the consequences of further procedural failures. The costs order is the latest in a sequence of adverse developments for the action, which was presented as a landmark test of governing bodies' duty of care in contact sport.

For funders, the case illustrates how a cost liability generated by the conduct of a law firm rather than the merits of the underlying claims can land on a funded book, and how little clarity English procedure offers about where that liability ultimately sits.

Commercial

Krasha to Launch India-Focused Litigation Finance Platform With US$10 Million Minimum Claim Size

Krasha Financial Services has announced plans to launch a dedicated litigation finance platform aimed at the Indian market, with first deployments targeted for the fourth quarter of the 2026-27 financial year.

As reported by India CSR, the platform will fund commercial litigation, arbitration, insolvency claims and award enforcement. Krasha has set a minimum claim size of US$10 million and will cap funded matters at a five-year expected duration, a structure designed to filter out the long-tail cases that have historically made Indian litigation difficult to underwrite. The company said it is in advanced discussions with a UK-based legal finance firm about a strategic partnership, which would give it access to established underwriting practice in a more mature market.

Krasha's chief financial officer, Avdhesh Singh, framed the opportunity around the scale of unresolved Indian litigation, citing more than 50 million pending cases across the court system. The company pointed to global litigation finance market estimates of roughly US$29 billion in 2026, rising to about US$43 billion by 2031, and referenced Burford Capital's reported 26% internal rate of return as a benchmark for the asset class.

The litigation finance platform will sit separately from Krasha's existing neo-financing business, which has a deployment target of ₹1,200 crore for FY2026-27. The group also runs Prism Strategy, a Category II alternative investment fund of roughly US$60 million to US$70 million. Krasha was founded in November 2023.

India has no dedicated statutory framework for third-party funding, and the launch will test how far a domestic funder can build an underwriting model without one.