Department of Justice sues Live Nation-Ticketmaster for antitrust violations

After a year-long investigation, the Justice Department announced it had filed a lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster for violating antitrust laws.

An event sales company has been charged with violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act over allegations it poached competing event promoters and forced venues and artists into exclusionary contracts, in some cases for up to 10 years. Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed he controlled 80% of major concert hall ticket sales, had contracts with 400 artists, and owned or controlled 60% of amphitheaters. As a result, Garland said, “It was time to break it up.”

“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopoly control over the live events industry in the United States at the expense of fans, artists, smaller promoters and venue operators,” Garland said at a press conference Thursday. “As a result, fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play shows, smaller promoters are squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices in ticketing services.”

Thirty state and district attorneys general are joining the lawsuit. In addition to the forced separation of Ticketmaster from recently acquired subsidies, they are demanding structural relief.

Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, in a statement to the Washington Examiner cited its annual net profit of 1.4% as a reason it does not consider itself a monopoly. The company said the lawsuit would only be a “short-term image victory for the Department of Justice,” and it forgot that the Obama administration had then approved Live Nation’s takeover of Ticketmaster.

“It was clear from our conversations with the Department of Justice Front Office that the Department of Justice simply did not want to believe the numbers. “The data was too inconsistent with their preconceived notion that Live Nation was among the other ‘tech monopolists’ they were targeting,” Live Nation Executive Vice President Dan Wall said in a statement. “It is also clear that we are yet another victim of this administration’s decision to hand over antitrust enforcement to a populist pressure that simply rejects how antitrust law works.”

When it came to the department’s accusation that Live Nation used a “flywheel” model that recycles royalty profits to secure more contracts with artists and venues, the company said all fees go to venues, which are also responsible for setting fees . It was also alleged that artists fix ticket prices and the high prices are due to scalping.

This comes after Tickmaster’s website saw pre-sale tickets for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” being condemned by many, and general ticket sales were ultimately canceled altogether.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“We knew that a record number of fans wanted tickets to Taylor’s tour,” began a statement from Ticketmaster about the 2022 incident, which it released to clarify the situation. The pre-sale attempt to ask fans to register as a “verified fan” was intended to eliminate bots and then “make wait times shorter and sales smoother.”

“Historically, we have been able to manage the high volume of people visiting the website to purchase tickets, so those with Verified Fan codes can enjoy a seamless purchasing process,” the statement read. “However, this time, an astonishing number of bot attacks, as well as fans who did not have the codes, drove unprecedented traffic to our site, resulting in 3.5 billion system requests – 4 times more than previously.”