What concertgoers should know

The Department of Justice is suing Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, for allegedly monopolizing the live entertainment industry.
The lawsuit aims to restore competition in the space and lower ticket prices for fans.

Do you feel like you’re paying too much for concert tickets? The Department of Justice thinks so too.

The department, along with the attorneys general of 29 states and the District of Columbia, is suing Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, for allegedly monopolizing the live entertainment industry. The department’s announcement Thursday says the lawsuit aims to restore competition in the market and lower ticket prices for fans by dissolving the company.

“Today’s action is a step forward in making the live music era more accessible to fans, artists and the industry that supports them,” Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.

Here’s what the lawsuit could mean for concert-goers.

What does the Ticketmaster and Live Nation lawsuit result from?

The lawsuit alleges that Live Nation owns more than 265 concert halls in North America and controls approximately 60% of concert promotions at major concert venues nationwide and approximately 80% of headline ticket sales at major concert venues.

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The Justice Department accuses the companies – which merged in 2010 – of using “various” tactics aimed at eliminating competition and monopolizing markets, including locking down concert venues with exclusive, long-term contracts and threatening retaliation against venues that cooperate with rivals.

The lawsuit also alleges that the companies engaged in “numerous forms of anti-competitive behavior” through a “self-perpetuating” business model that captured revenue from concert-goers, used it to “lock” artists to exclusive deals, and then used its cache of live content to sign exclusive, long-term ticketing agreements with venues, “thus starting the cycle all over again.”

The company “has its tentacles in every part of the supply chain,” said Michael Carrier, a board professor at Rutgers Law School with expertise in antitrust law.

How will this affect ticket prices?

But legal experts say the company’s position in the live entertainment industry may not be sustainable now that attorneys general are calling on the company to split its assets.

According to Shubha Ghosh, a law professor at Syracuse University, this could give consumers more choices about where to buy tickets and which carrier’s facilities are worth visiting, and therefore make tickets cheaper.

According to Carrier, the Rutgers professor, more competition can also lead to higher quality services.

The lawsuit alleges that Live Nation and the Ticketmaster monopoly reduced incentives to “invest more in proactively improving ticket sales” and that any money that might otherwise have been spent on technological improvements was instead directed to “sweetening ticket sales deals for facilities to keep them closed for a long time.” “exclusive term contracts.”

Breaking up the company could result in “a better user interface, better ticket inventory presentation and a more flexible refund policy,” Carrier said. “So ultimately I think the fans will really benefit from this.”

The lawsuit did not provide an estimate of how much this could save consumers, but Carrier said the savings could be “extremely significant.”

“Some tickets will definitely be high. There are more people interested in seeing Taylor Swift than there are tickets available,” he said. “But on the other hand, when competition comes in, prices tend to go down.”

However, fans should not expect any changes in the near future due to this lawsuit.

“Unfortunately, antitrust disputes take a long time,” Carrier said. “This is just the first step in this process. … We look years into the future.”

Is Kentucky part of the lawsuit against Live Nation, Ticketmaster?

NO. Kentucky is not listed as one of the plaintiffs in the complaint against Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

The states mentioned in the complaint are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Washington was also named as one of the plaintiffs in the complaint.

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What does Ticketmaster say?

Live Nation called the allegations “baseless” and said the lawsuit “will not resolve fans’ concerns about ticket prices, service fees and access to popular programming.”

“It is absurd to claim that Live Nation and Ticketmaster exercise monopoly power,” Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, said in a blog post Thursday.

The company’s statement said that 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 are charged to favor of venues, and competition continues to erode Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margin.”

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The company said its annual net profit of 1.4% was “the antithesis of monopoly power” and said the live events market was “more competitive than ever.”

Live Nation shares fell more than 8% early Thursday afternoon. A press release on Live Nation’s website said the company plans to release a regulatory update via conference call at 8 p.m. EST.

How Taylor Swift is joining the debate

Complaints about Ticketmaster’s operations are nothing new, and the company has been the subject of antitrust scrutiny since merging with Live Nation in 2010. However, public anger gained momentum after the Ticketmaster outage in late 2022, which made it difficult for Taylor Swift fans to purchase tickets for her Eras tour.

The fiasco was criticized by Swift and many politicians. Senator Amy Klobuchar issued a statement in November 2022 expressing “serious concerns about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers,” and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called Ticketmaster’s attempts to address the issue “a short-term solution.” long-term problem.”