The $10 million fine against Ticketmaster - a wholly owned subsidiary of entertainment giant Live Nation - settles five criminal charges for illegal computer access and fraud. This investigation is a perfect example of why these laws exist - to protect consumers from being cheated in what should be a fair market place,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F.
“Ticketmaster used stolen information to gain an advantage over its competition, and then promoted the employees who broke the law. The department is using the case as a reminder that corporate espionage cases get its full attention. The Justice Department describes a caper that began in 2013 and ran through most of 2015, as Ticketmaster monitored Songkick’s private online pre-sales of tickets and “a password-protected app that provided real-time data about tickets sold through the victim company.” The information was later used for a presentation at the 2014 “summit” about the rival company’s activities. Ticketmaster settled it for $110 million and an agreement to acquire some of the rival company’s tech and intellectual property. The investigation that led to the charges essentially stemmed from a 2018 antitrust lawsuit by Songkick.
The feds don’t name the victim company, but it’s widely known to be Songkick. “Further, Ticketmaster’s employees brazenly held a division-wide ‘summit’ at which the stolen passwords were used to access the victim company’s computers, as if that were an appropriate business tactic.”
“Ticketmaster employees repeatedly – and illegally – accessed a competitor’s computers without authorization using stolen passwords to unlawfully collect business intelligence,” said acting U.S. The rival company didn’t know that one of its former employees had leaked logins to Ticketmaster, which used them to gather information in the mid-2010s about the competitor’s technology and other aspects of its business. One of the biggest brands in the music and events business, Ticketmaster, has agreed to pay a $10 million fine for “computer intrusion and fraud offenses” after employees used stolen credentials to spy on a competitor, according to the Department of Justice.
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