The Justice Department wants to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster in an antitrust lawsuit

Department The judiciary is expected to call for the dissolution of concert and ticketing giant Live Nation, an unusual claim in an antitrust lawsuit the department is expected to file in New York on Thursday morning, according to a source familiar with the matter Rolling Stone.

The Department of Justice lawsuit has been one of the most anticipated potential legal actions in the live music industry since news of the regulatory investigation broke in 2022. Since then, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have faced intense scrutiny from fans, rival concert and ticketing companies, and regulators. the two companies merged in 2010, and critics say the merger made it harder for other companies to compete in the live music market. Bloomberg was the first to report the matter.

Frustration with the company – and the ticketing industry as a whole – is back in the national spotlight after Taylor Swift’s infamous Eras Tour sellout left thousands of Swifties irate over technical difficulties and long lines trying to secure tickets. The Justice Department’s investigation into the company began before the Swift sale.

Outside the Justice Department, lawmakers including Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn, Richard Blumenthal and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have called for tighter regulations surrounding Live Nation in recent years. I am talking with Rolling Stone last year, Klobuchar cited, among other things, the number of venues operated by Ticketmaster, the company’s exclusive deals and rising fees.

“That makes them a vertically integrated giant,” Klobuchar said. “They book the concert, sell the tickets and own the venue(s), which makes there little competition. And despite the consent decree that they agreed to extend, we are not seeing the competition that we should.”

Live Nation and its CFO Joe Berchtold were questioned for several hours during a Senate Judiciary hearing in early 2023. “The fact is that Live Nation/Ticketmaster is the 800-pound gorilla here,” Blumenthal told Berchtold during the hearing. “You have clear dominance and monopoly control. This whole concert ticket system is a mess.

This isn’t the first time the Justice Department has targeted Live Nation. The Justice Department reached a settlement with Live Nation in 2019 to amend the consent decree the company had been obligated to since the 2010 Ticketmaster merger, extending the consent decree through 2025. Under the original merger agreement, Live Nation was obligated to assurances would not be retaliation against venues that do not use Ticketmaster, although the Justice Department accused the company of violating the statute.

Live Nation has consistently denied antitrust allegations, saying the concert and ticketing industry is more competitive than ever. They point to artists, not Ticketmaster, which sets ticket prices, and say venues typically set the widely deplored fees that accompany concert tickets. A representative for Live Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since the investigation was launched, Live Nation has devoted more resources to focusing on other major issues in the live music industry, namely predatory resale and scalping from companies that extort fans for significant markups. Last year, the company launched the Fair Ticket Act, calling on state and federal lawmakers to pass laws allowing artists to control their tickets, enforce the BOTS Act and end resale strategies such as speculative ticketing.

Earlier this year, Live Nation’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, Dan Wall, wrote an essay explaining how the company’s business works, clarifying some of the same points while also pointing out the impact that scalpers and the resale industry have on ticket prices.

“Claims that Live Nation and Ticketmaster ‘keep ticket prices high’ are simply wrong,” Wall wrote. “Anyone with a basic understanding of the industry knows this. Those who perpetuate this lie are cynical at best. They do harm to consumers and to rational political discourse.”

This story is developing