Ticketmaster has to pay up for being sneaky

After six years of legal wrangling, someone finally managed to make Ticketmaster accountable for their infamous price-gouging practices. A Canadian lawyer just won a $6 million settlement over the company's notorious "drip pricing" strategy, reports CTV News.

Sure, everyone understands a ticketing company needs to earn a reasonable fee for connecting fans with events. But Ticketmaster has morphed from helpful middleman into the entertainment industry's toll-collecting troll under the bridge, extracting whatever fees they want because, really, where else are you gonna go?

Regina lawyer Tony Merchant led the charge against the ticket-selling behemoth's practice of surprising customers with an endless parade of add-on fees. "It unfairly tricked people into paying more money for really the same thing," Merchant told CTV News. (In late-stage capitalist countries, companies are supposed to be fair about tricking people.)

Ticketmaster did the classic corporate two-step of denying any wrongdoing while simultaneously agreeing to pay millions to make it all go away. The settlement will dish out $45 credits to Canadians who bought tickets during the first half of 2018.

The lawyers are getting $1.7 million, which seems fair considering they spent six years of their lives pursuing this case while Ticketmaster's lawyers probably tried to add processing fees to their legal documents.

Previously:
We already know Ticketmaster is a rip-off, John Oliver explains just how terrible it is
Ex-Ticketmaster CEO blames vinyl album lengths on TikTok
Ticketmaster stung by undercover journalists, who reveal that the company deliberately enables scalpers and rips off artists
Justice Department sues Livenation over Ticketmaster monopoly abuses
Proposed redesign of Ticketmaster's ugly and confusing tickets
Ticketmaster gets $500 million from Mohammad bin Salman