FILE PHOTO: Live Nation Entertainment logo is seen in this illustration taken May 23, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

(Reuters) - U.S. regulators were investigating whether Live Nation's Ticketmaster was doing enough to prevent bots from illegally reselling tickets on its platform, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, an allegation the company denied.

The probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which examines the ticket-selling unit's compliance with the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, is at an advanced stage and a decision on whether to pursue a case could come within weeks, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The 2016 law prohibits the use of bots and other methods to bypass ticket purchase limits set by online sellers.

A spokesperson for Ticketmaster told Reuters in an emailed statement: "We haven't violated the BOTS Act and will vigorously defend any such claims, however we would prefer to work with the FTC to implement policies to improve the ticketing industry."

"We believe the FTC has a fundamental misunderstanding of Ticketmaster's policies, and is taking an excessively expansionist view of the BOTS Act," the spokesperson added.

Ticketmaster blocks 200 million bots each day, a fivefold increase from 2019, the spokesperson said.

Live Nation has been in U.S. regulatory crosshairs. The Department of Justice sued the company and Ticketmaster last year for allegedly monopolizing markets across the live concert industry in ways that hurt artists and ticket buyers.

More recently, the FTC has sought information from artists and fans about unfair and anticompetitive practices in the live concert and event industries as part of a crackdown by the Trump administration on ticket scalping.

In August, the FTC sued ticket reseller Key Investment Group, accusing it of evading purchase limits to acquire thousands of tickets for events, including Taylor Swift's Eras tour, and reselling them at inflated prices.

Bloomberg said in the report that FTC investigators were also assessing whether Ticketmaster has a financial incentive to allow resellers to circumvent its ticket limit rules, according to the report.

If the FTC pursues a case and Live Nation loses, the company could face billions of dollars in penalties, as the law permits fines of up to $53,000 per violation, Bloomberg said.

The FTC declined to comment.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City and Ateev Bhandari in Bengaluru; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi)