This article was first published on World Trademark Review on 9th October 2025
- Chappell Roan, Dua Lipa and Twenty One Pilots among spate of major music artists cracking down on counterfeit merchandise
- Higher reliance on ticket and merchandise sales makes a smart anti-counterfeiting strategy more critical than ever
- It has “never been easier” to create and distribute bootleg merchandise, warns Murgitroyd trademark director
Official merchandise suppliers and major musicians, including Chappell Roan, Dua Lipa and Twenty One Pilots, have recently filed a string of lawsuits targeting counterfeit and bootleg merchandise being sold online and outside of stadiums.
These artists are likely looking to protect “a valuable revenue stream”, suggests Murgitroyd Director of Trade Marks Mike Vettese.
In the age of streaming, music artists have become more reliant than before on ticket and merchandise sales to make up the majority of their incomes. On average, merchandise sales from a concert held in a 1,500 capacity venue can generate over $6,000 a night. In contrast, a single stream typically generates between $0.003 and $0.005 on a major platform like Spotify.
“Revenue generated from streaming and physical recordings can take time to accrue,”Vettese notes. “Accordingly, musicians, bands and artists rely on ticket sales for their live concerts and, of course, the sale of official merchandise at the venues or online to generate income,” he explains. “Every t-shirt sold by a bootlegger is a significant loss of revenue, and this cannot be tolerated. Hence, brand owners are taking action to defend the revenue stream and protect their goodwill.”
Merchandise produced by official partners can face significant markups in price due to the underlying licensing fee. By contrast, unofficial merchandise stands forgo proper licensing arrangements and avoid other overheads (eg, a cut to the venue), allowing them to sell merchandise at significantly lower prices to fans.
Concerningly, these unauthorised products have never been easier to produce on a mass scale, Vettese notes. “With today’s technology and manufacturing capabilities, it has never been easier to create and distribute counterfeit merchandise,” he stresses. “There are so many platforms for the sale of counterfeit merchandise, and a heat press to create the merchandise can be bought for a few hundred pounds.”
“Anyone can create counterfeit merchandise in a spare room and flood the market with cheap knockoffs,” Vettese warns. “After purchase, it is not always immediately apparent if the merchandise is official or otherwise,” he adds.
This makes a tough but thoughtful anti-counterfeiting strategy more critical than ever.
“The lawsuits themselves will have a deterrent effect to a certain extent,” Vettese predicts. “The cost of pursuing court action is high and so would only really be considered worthwhile if the counterfeiting is on a substantial scale,” he suggests.
“I have had success in the past in motivating local Trading Standards officers to police the outside of stadiums and take action to seize potentially counterfeit goods,” he recounts. “This works well for the protection of both the public and the brand owner. It is also cost-effective for the brand owner, as Trading Standards takes care of any destruction of the goods and prosecution for civil trademark infringement.”
Curbing counterfeit merchandise online presents different challenges, however.
“It can be relatively easy to close an Amazon or eBay store, but another tends to pop up under a different name very quickly,” Vettese laments. The huge size of these online marketplaces can make pursuing every case of counterfeiting and infringement expensive and time-consuming for brand owners, he notes. “Typically, there is a
balance to be had between the cost of acting and the return in terms of success,” he says.
Brands must recognise when it is prudent to spend money on enforcement.
“There is a balance to be struck between the costs of enforcement and the scale of the counterfeiting,” Vettese continues. “Small-scale counterfeiting may not justify the costs of taking action, but not doing so can also act as a ‘green flag’ for others to then do the same, safe in the knowledge that action is unlikely to be forthcoming.”
“I try to encourage clients to take action no matter the scale of infringement,” Vettese emphasises. “Not only to act as a deterrent, but also to acknowledge the hard work and support of Trading Standards.”
But, outside the realm of traditional counterfeit and bootleg merchandise, music fans producing homemade merchandise can create a strategic grey zone.
“Some of the sellers on Etsy and the like can be true fans, producing ‘fan art,’” Vettese acknowledges. “While technically an infringement, this tends to be on a much lower scale, and do brand owners really wish to upset true fans by taking action? Likely not.”
Indeed, sensitivity around fan-made merchandise has motivated some artists in the past to issue public apologies to fans sued for infringement.
In 2023, for example, country music artist Luke Combs requested that his attorneys remove Florida resident Nicol Harness from a lawsuit filed on his behalf, seeking to take down listings for drink tumblers that she had made with his name and likeness. The tumblers were available on Amazon for $20 each.
Combs offered an apology over Instagram, claiming that his attorneys were only supposed to take action against large-scale counterfeiting operations.
Some businesses have even cropped up to cater to the desire of fans to create their own legal merchandise. Founded in 2022, Softside’s platform, for example, allows artists to create accounts to sell merchandise designed using official trademarks, logos and images provided by the musicians themselves. Each item is then approved by the musicians’ teams before it is available for sale on the site.
As musicians increasingly rely on merchandise and ticket sales, we can expect that litigation around counterfeit merchandise will continue to be pursued by major artists.
Rights holders must know when to act, deterring cynical counterfeiters while being delicate around fan-made merchandise.
