If you promote events in the United States, the legal ground under ticket selling shifted more in the last two years than in the previous ten. A federal all-in pricing rule took effect in May 2025. The FTC was ordered by the White House to get more aggressive with ticket bots. New York already forces you to show the full price before a buyer picks a seat. And depending on the city, you may need a promoter license you have never heard of.
Most of what has been written about these rules targets lawyers or the big resale platforms. Almost nothing is written for the person who actually puts on the show. This article covers the three layers that matter to a working promoter — federal, state, and city — what each one requires in practice, and what to demand from your ticketing platform so compliance is not your problem alone.
The BOTS Act: the federal law against ticket bots
The Better Online Ticket Sales Act — the BOTS Act — is a federal law from 2016 that makes it illegal to use bots to circumvent the purchase limits and security measures of online ticket sellers. The Federal Trade Commission enforces it.
For years it looked like a paper tiger. Then in January 2021 the FTC brought its first-ever cases under the Act against three New York ticket brokers, with proposed civil penalties totaling more than $31 million, announced jointly by the FTC and the Department of Justice. The brokers had used automated tools to scoop up tickets past posted purchase limits and resell them at a markup.
Enforcement has only intensified since. In March 2025, an Executive Order directed the FTC to prioritize BOTS Act enforcement in the ticket resale market, as analyzed by Wiley. And the FTC is currently litigating against a broker, KIG, accused of using bots to acquire Taylor Swift tickets, a case covered by TicketNews.
What the BOTS Act means for you as a promoter
The Act does not put obligations on you — it protects you. But that protection is only as strong as the limits you actually set. Three practical moves:
- Post explicit purchase limits on every on-sale (per buyer, per card, per event). The BOTS Act targets circumvention of *your* posted limits and security measures; if you never set any, there is nothing to circumvent.
- Use a ticketing platform with real bot mitigation — rate limiting, device fingerprinting, queue control. Enforcement actions get built on evidence of evasion, and your platform is where that evidence lives.
- Document abnormal purchase patterns. The 2021 cases were built on data. If a broker strips your on-sale, records of the evasion are what turn a complaint into a case.
If you also operate in Europe, note that the resale conversation is moving in the same direction on both sides of the Atlantic — see our analysis of the UK's proposed face-value resale cap for the British counterpart to this enforcement wave.
The FTC Junk Fees Rule: all-in pricing is now federal law
This is the rule most likely to affect your daily operations. The FTC's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees — universally known as the Junk Fees Rule — has been in force since May 12, 2025. The FTC announced it as a bipartisan rule banning junk ticket and hotel fees, and it applies squarely to live-event ticketing.
Two core obligations:
- 1Total price, up front. The all-in price — face value plus every mandatory fee — must be displayed prominently from the first advertisement or listing, not revealed step by step.
- 2No drip pricing. The practice of showing a low headline price and stacking service fees, facility fees and processing fees onto it during checkout is prohibited.
The FTC has published FAQs clarifying how the rule works in practice, summarized by Greenberg Traurig, and the trade press tracked the run-up to the effective date closely — TicketNews has a promoter-readable overview.
Who is on the hook: you and your platform
The rule applies to whoever offers, displays or advertises the price. In practice that means it reaches both the promoter and the ticketing platform: your event page, your social ads with a price on them, and the checkout your platform renders. Audit all three. If your ads say "$25" and the buyer pays $32.40, you have a problem that no longer ends at cart abandonment — it ends at a federal regulator.
Practical checklist:
- Every price you publish — page, ad, email — must be the total the buyer will actually pay in mandatory charges.
- Check how your ticketing platform renders prices on event pages and embedded widgets. If it cannot show all-in pricing, that is a platform problem you inherit.
- Do not bury fee breakdowns. You can itemize, but the total must be the most prominent figure.
State laws: New York is the template others copy
Ticket resale is legal in most U.S. states, but the requirements vary widely — the National Association of Ticket Brokers maintains a useful compendium of state ticket statutes if you sell across several.
New York goes furthest, and it is worth studying because state legislatures copy it. Arts and Cultural Affairs Law §25.07 requires, per the statute text:
- All-in pricing before ticket selection — the total cost, fees included, must be disclosed before the buyer selects a ticket.
- No price inflation during checkout — the price cannot increase during the purchase process.
- Full refunds on cancellation — if the event is canceled, the buyer gets everything back, service fees included.
The New York Department of State has issued compliance reminders to ticket sellers making clear this is actively supervised, not theoretical.
If you promote in New York, note the overlap: complying with §25.07 largely means you are also complying with the federal Junk Fees Rule, but the refund obligation is an extra layer the federal rule does not impose.
City and state promoter licenses: the layer everyone forgets
Below federal and state law sits a patchwork of local licensing that catches promoters by surprise:
- New York City requires a Ticket Seller Business License to sell tickets in public spaces, administered by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
- Philadelphia requires anyone organizing events to register as an Event Promoter with the city.
- Washington State imposes specific tax collection and registration obligations on "special event promoters" through its Department of Revenue.
And do not forget the tax layer while you are at it: there is no federal VAT in the U.S., but several states tax admissions directly — Tennessee treats concert and festival tickets as subject to sales tax, and New Jersey taxes any admission charge above $0.75. Check the Department of Revenue of every state you sell in — the rules are state-specific and change.
The pattern across all of it: check the city and the state before you announce the event. A license you did not know existed is a cheap fix in advance and an expensive one after tickets are on sale.
Your compliance checklist for 2026
Pulling the three layers together, this is the minimum a U.S. promoter should have in place:
- 1All-in pricing everywhere — event page, ads, emails, embedded widgets. Federal law since May 12, 2025; New York law before that.
- 2Posted purchase limits on every on-sale, so the BOTS Act protects you and bots have a limit to violate.
- 3Bot mitigation at the platform level, with logs you can hand to a lawyer if a broker strips your inventory.
- 4A refund policy that covers fees for cancellations — mandatory in New York, good practice everywhere.
- 5City and state licenses verified before the announcement: NYC, Philadelphia and Washington State are the documented examples, but they are not the only ones.
- 6A controlled channel for resale, so sold-out demand flows through a route you govern instead of a broker's markup. Our guide on how to control ticket resale covers the mechanics.
Where your ticketing platform fits
Most of this list is only achievable if your ticketing platform does its part. When you evaluate a platform for the U.S. market, ask specifically: can it display all-in pricing from the first screen? Can it enforce per-buyer purchase limits? Does it log purchase patterns well enough to document bot activity? Can it run refunds that include fees?
At Futura Tickets, this is the ground our product is built on. Encrypted QR tickets make each admission verifiable and hard to duplicate. An official, controlled resale channel lets you offer a waitlist and face-value resale for sold-out events instead of ceding that demand to brokers. Box-office and access control give you a live view of who bought and who entered. The organizer owns the buyer data, which is what turns a compliance log into something you can actually produce when asked. Flexible settlement schedules address the cash-flow squeeze of platforms that pay days after the event. And cashless payments extend the same traceability to on-site spending.
We will not tell you a platform makes you compliant — no platform can honestly claim that, because compliance depends on how you price, announce and run your events. What a platform can do is make every item on the checklist above operationally easy instead of a manual chore. That is the standard to hold any provider to, ours included.
*This article is for general information only and is not legal or tax advice. Ticket selling, consumer protection and tax laws change frequently and vary by state and city. Consult a qualified attorney or tax professional before making decisions for your events.*
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