'It is time to break up Live Nation': DOJ sues Ticketmaster parent over alleged monopoly

23/05/2024

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to break up Live Nation, alleging that the parent company of Ticketmaster has hurt consumers and violated antitrust laws by exercising outsize control over the live events industry.

The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York and backed by attorneys general for 29 states plus Washington, D.C., alleges that Live Nation has engaged in practices that harm the entire live entertainment industry — from artists and fans to venues and startups seeking to break into the business.

“Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation.”

Among the accusations against Live Nation:

That it has worked with a venue management firm called Oak View Group to steer clients into signing exclusive agreements to use Ticketmaster. Co-founded by influential entertainment executive and former Live Nation chairman Irving Azoff, Oak View oversees dozens of arenas around the world. A representative for Oak View did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
That it has sought to snuff out competition in the concert-promotion business through threats of retaliation and has acquired upstart groups it saw as threats.
That it signs long-term, “exclusionary” deals with venues that preempt them from looking to alternative management companies and from using multiple ticketing platforms.
That Ticketmaster becomes the default ticketing platform for many artists because Live Nation controls a large share of venues where they’d seek to play.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have disputed accusations that they are a monopoly, citing increasing competition for online ticketing sales, especially in the secondary or resale market from companies like StubHub and Vivid Seats. Ticketmaster now also offers resold tickets.

Ticketmaster has faced gripes from fans and artist for years, but the ire reached a fever pitch in 2022 following a botched ticket rollout for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.” The Senate Judiciary Committee subsequently held a hearing on the company’s role in the ticketing industry.

Thursday’s lawsuit filing joins a handful of other major antitrust efforts initiated under President Joe Biden, who has made rooting out alleged monopolies a cornerstone of his presidency. In July 2021, he signed an executive order to promote competition. Among the biggest such actions the Biden administration has taken, the DOJ filed a lawsuit in March accusing Apple of exercising monopoly power over the smartphone market, which the tech giant has denied.

Biden has said that while he is “proud capitalist,” “capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism, it’s exploitation.”

Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which merged in 2010, control an estimated 70% of the ticketing and live-event venues market, though the companies have disputed that figure.

Several bills have been introduced over the past year to address issues affecting ticket buyers. The House last week passed the Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act, which would require sellersto disclose all costs and fees upfront when they list tickets for sale.

Live Nation supported the move and said it backs ticketing reforms such as anti-bot legislation and banning speculative tickets, or the sale of tickets that are not currently in the seller’s possession.

“Bipartisan support for these reforms show that protecting fans and artists is in everyone’s interest,” the company said in a statement. “We look forward to working with policymakers to make these changes law.”

Recently, over 250 artists signed a letter in support of the Fans First Act, which was introduced in the Senate in December. The bill seeks to improve price transparency and consumer protections as well as prevent bad actors from charging exorbitant prices. It would also bolster the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, passed in 2016 to prohibit scalpers from using software to purchase tickets in bulk, by further prohibiting the use of bots in ticket sales.

Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs, responded to complaints about its ticket sales and prices in a post on the Live Nation website in March.

Ticketmaster is perceived as an “enormous ticket retailer that acquires vast quantities of tickets and puts them up for sale at prices Ticketmaster determines,” Wall wrote. But in reality, he said, ticket prices are set by artists and sports teams.

Consumer advocacy groups cheered reports earlier this year that the Justice Department was planning to sue Live Nation.

A case against the company would show “the severity of this situation and the need for action to protect fans,” Mark Meador, the president of the Fan Fairness Coalition and a Republican antitrust expert, said in a statement in April.

“This will be a critical step in holding Ticketmaster and Live Nation accountable for monopolistic, anticompetitive business practices that have eroded free market competition in the live event ticketing industry and hurt millions of fans,” he said.

Ticketmaster has also argued that artists and their teams set the terms for how tickets are rolled out. In a webpage titled Ticketing Truths, Ticketmaster says acts are responsible for setting face-value ticket prices. And in collaboration with managers, agents and promoters, artists also decide which venues to play, when to put tickets on sale and how to sell them, it says.

As for service fees — a frequent target of criticism among fans — the company says they are set by venues, which also keep most of the fee proceeds. “Some portion” of fee revenue goes to the ticketing company and to pay credit card fees.