Live Nation and Ticketmaster have been facing serious scrutiny for years. As the cost of attending concerts has continued to skyrocket, the company and its subsidiary seem to always be at the center of the crisis.
Now, much to the joy of concertgoers, a report from the Wall Street Journal has revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice plans on suing Live Nation for breaching antitrust laws. So, what is this lawsuit about?
What is the Live Nation lawsuit about?
In 2022, it became clear that Live Nation needed to do something about its professional practices. This came in the wake of the Ticketmaster site crashing in November of that year during the pre-sales of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tickets. Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010, and though the merger was questioned at the time, it was ultimately allowed. However, after the highly controversial Eras Tour incident, a bipartisan agreement was reached among U.S. senators to begin an investigation into Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation. By the time Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour tickets went on sale, the U.S. Senate made it clear that they had their eyes on Ticketmaster.
The case against Ticketmaster
It seems that the Department of Justice is finally ready to act on their findings and reports indicate that the department will be filing a suit in a few weeks. The allegations against the company include their aggressive business practices and Ticketmaster’s ever-expanding monopoly on the ticket sale and concert experience industries. Live Nation doesn’t just have a hand in ticket sales through Ticketmaster, but also owns some concert venues and handles concert promotion for some artists and venues.
Antitrust laws include the groups of laws that prevent companies from forming monopolies and engaging in underhand tactics like price fixing. Despite the claims of exorbitant fees, and the complaints about poor customer service, several concertgoers don’t have alternatives for purchasing tickets to shows. Summarily, this is why the company is being investigated for monopolistic behavior.
Has Live Nation responded to the claims?
Dan Wall, the head of corporate affairs at Live Nation, put out a blog post on the site to dispel the claims that Live Nation or Ticketmaster are monopolies. In the post, he explained how ticket pricing works, claiming that artists and their teams are behind them. He also explained how fees, such as service charges, work, and claimed that these fees are set by venues and go primarily to performers. He insisted that the fees are used to cover show costs.
However, what stood out in his claim is his statement that ticketing companies and promoters are getting close to nothing. Naturally, the claims in the post have been contested. They have since been dismissed as somewhere between “not fully accurate” and “completely false.”
This is mostly because, even if most of the claims are true, Live Nation still holds “more than 80% of the market for primary ticket sales.” Moreover, the company owns the rights to sell tickets exclusively for some venues. So regardless of Wall’s attempts at saving his head, Live Nation still boasts some form of monopoly in the industry.
