The Justice Department expects to file an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and its Ticketmaster unit

CNN
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The Justice Department and several states are expected to file a lawsuit as early as Thursday against Live Nation Inc, citing alleged antitrust violations at least in part stemming from the market dominance of the company’s Ticketmaster unit, said a person briefed on the planned legal action.

A successful antitrust case has the potential to lead to radical changes in the live events market, an industry that has come under intense scrutiny in 2022 after glitches at Ticketmaster prevented millions of people from purchasing tickets to Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour.

For many critics of Live Nation, Swift’s debacle exposed how a lack of competition has led to harm ranging from poor customer service, to misleading pricing, to high ticket fees, to restrictions on the resale of tickets – with many consumers complaining about the deaths of thousands of people cut .

The fiasco led lawmakers last January to question the chief executive of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, over the company’s practices.

During the three-hour hearing, senators pressed Live Nation CEO and CFO Joe Berchtold and several other witnesses on whether his company was too dominant in the industry, thereby harming rivals, musicians and fans.

“I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal told Berchtold. “You have united Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely common cause.”

It’s not just music fans and lawmakers who have criticized Live Nation over the years – many musicians and other pop culture figures have done so as well.

Country star Zach Bryan released a surprise album in late 2022 titled “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster (Live at Red Rocks).”

In a social media post announcing the album’s release on Christmas Eve, Bryan wrote that “there seems to be a huge problem lately with fair ticket prices for live shows.”

Even the long-running animated series “The Simpsons” has grown in popularity, with rapacious capitalist Mr. Burns in one episode taunting his butler, Mr. Smithers: “You were laughing when I bought Ticketmaster. “Nobody is going to pay a 100 percent fee for a service.”

This article has been updated with additional context.

CNN’s Brian Fung, Samantha Kelly, Hannah Rabinowitz and Dan Heching contributed reporting.