The US Department of Justice along with 29 states and the District of Columbia have filmed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nations and Ticketmaster. They are seeking to break up the two entities and claim (rightly) that Live Nation has not only illegally inflated ticket prices but also taken “abusive steps to squash competition” in the ticket space. A statement released by US Attorney General Merrick Garland says in part,
”We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators. The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”
As of right now, Ticketmaster holds between 70%-80% of the primary ticket sales market in the US alone. Dan Wall, the vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs for Live Nation, released a statement on Live Nation’s website which reads in part,
”There was intense political pressure on DOJ to file a lawsuit, and a long-term lobbying campaign from rivals and ticket brokers seeing government protection for themselves. […] It ignores everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices, from increasing production costs to artist popularity, to 24/7 online ticket scalping that reveals the public’s willingness to pay far more than primary tickets cost. It blames Live Nation and Ticketmaster for high service charges, but ignores that Ticketmaster retains only a modest portion of those fees. In fact, primary ticketing is one of the least expensive digital distributions in the economy.”
The DOJ initially launched their antitrust investigation into Live Nation in 2022. The US House of Representatives have also passed an act called the TICKET Act which would work to create more transparency in the ticketing space and would require all places that sell tickets to show the actual price of the ticket with all of the fees presented in an itemized list. The act needs to be voted on by the Senate and signed by the president before it can be put into practice. We will keep you updated.