Tennessee joins federal antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation

The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit alleging that ticketing and touring giant Live Nation, which also owns parent ticketing company Ticketmaster, has engaged in an illegal monopoly.

Filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and signed by the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and 30 states (including Tennessee), the lawsuit recommends forcing Live Nation to divest Ticketmaster, which it merged with in 2010.

In November 2022 The Department of Justice confirmed investigated allegations of anti-competitive practices by Live Nation. Although this announcement came at a time when there was great public outrage unsuccessful ticket sales in the case of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, the department carefully noted that the investigation began before the incident.

Live Nation is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California, with offices nationwide (including a local outpost in Wedgewood-Houston) has exclusive booking offers or owns a wide range of properties of various sizes. Suit claims that the company used its financial leverage to unfairly dominate its industry. Efficiently, says the suitLive Nation has intimidated venues into restrictive contracts, forced artists to do business with them if they wanted to tour large enough to make a living, and created conditions that artificially inflated ticket prices.

The allegations correlate with complaints that fans, artists, talent bookers and venue owners and owners have made for many years. A release from Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office shows that Tennesseans spent more than $765 million on tickets sold through Ticketmaster between 2019 and 2022.

“Since Taylor Swift’s Ticketmaster ticket sales debacle in 2022, my AG colleagues and I have continually sought justice for Americans who want to go to concerts without having their pockets picked by the Live Nation monopoly,” Skrmetti says in a statement. “I will continue to fight on behalf of Tennessee artists, venues and concert-goers, and I am pleased to partner with the Department of Justice in a bipartisan effort to break the Live Nation/Ticketmaster monopoly.”

This is the latest action in which Skrmetti joins other state-owned AGs and recently joined challenges to the Biden administration’s policies on gun show loopholes AND protection of transgender students.

Update: Live Nation responded to the lawsuit with a lengthy statement that reads in part:

“The Department of Justice lawsuit will not solve fans’ concerns about ticket prices, service fees and access to in-demand programming. Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR victory for the Justice Department in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores basic principles of the live entertainment economy, such as the fact that most service fees go to venues and that competition continually erodes market share and Ticketmaster’s profit margin. Our growth comes from helping artists tour the world, creating lasting memories for millions of fans and supporting local economies across the country by maintaining high-quality jobs. We will defend ourselves against these baseless allegations, use this opportunity to shine a light on the industry, and continue to push for reforms that truly protect consumers and artists.”