Ticketmaster Sues Broker Over Use of 'Bots' to Buy Up Tickets

(Bloomberg) -- Ticketmaster says its customers are being ripped off by companies that use illegal “bots” to scoop up large quantities of highly sought tickets and it's fighting back.

The Beverly Hills, California-based company sued Prestige Entertainment, claiming it used computer programs to illegally buy as many as 40 percent of the available seats for performances of "Hamilton" in New York and the majority of the tickets Ticketmaster had available for the Mayweather v. Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas two years ago.

Prestige continued to use the illegal bots even after it paid a $3.35 million to settle New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's probe into the ticket resale industry. Under that deal, Prestige promised to abstain from using bots, Ticketmaster said in the complaint, filed Monday in Los Angeles federal court.

"The use of bots, which can access a website or mobile app and complete tasks far more quickly than human users, deprives legitimate consumers the opportunity to purchase tickets through Ticketmaster," the unit of Live Nation Entertainment Inc. said in the complaint.

Ticketmaster accused Prestige of breach of contract, fraud and violating New York's anti-scalping law, among other claims. Ticketmaster asked for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and a court order to stop Prestige from using bots.

Representatives of Prestige and its owner, Connecticut-based Renaissance Ventures LLC, didn't immediately return calls for comment on the lawsuit.

The case is Ticketmaster LLC v. Prestige Entertainment Inc., 17-CV-07232, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).

To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider