Live Nation and Ticketmaster are facing an investigation by the Department of Justice over their alleged anti-competitive and monopolistic practices. Amid news of the lawsuit, one legislator from Tennessee is speaking out.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told Fox News Digital that she will be “closely monitoring the Department’s actions” to ensure that the “online ticket industry better serves America’s music fans.”
“For far too long, Ticketmaster and Live Nation have allowed bots to snatch up tickets and sell them for exorbitantly high prices on the secondary market, and other ticketing companies have sold speculative tickets — which don’t actually exist — to fans,” Blackburn said.
Blackburn has advocated for songwriter and artist rights with several music industry constituents since her time in office. She told the publication that the ticket industry needs to re-think who they are catering to.
“We must continue fighting to ensure that the ticketing industry caters to the artists, venues, and fans that make American music so special,” Blackburn said.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation is coming as soon as next month. While specific charges were not determined, the companies have been accused of multiple anticompetitive business practices since they first merged in 2010, followed by a decision to refine and extend their decree in 2019 after the companies were accused of violating the decree by threatening companies who did not use Ticketmaster that shows would not be booked at their venues.
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Additionally, longtime Ticketmaster/Live Nation critic Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) shared an “explosive” previously suppressed study of the entertainment giant’s business practices last month, originally filed as part of a lawsuit against Live Nation in 2019. The report, Pascrell says, details “rampant corrupt and abusive practices by the Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopoly.”
The report lays out in detail allegations of anti-competitive business practices used by the entertainment giant for more than a decade, according to Rep. Pascrell’s office.
“Whether it is fans of Taylor Swift or countless other performers, the abuses of this monopoly have harmed tens of millions of Americans who are fed up with endless fees and ticket schemes.
Over the past year, music fans of all genres have faced various woes trying to purchase tickets to high-profile events like blink-182, Bad Bunny, Morgan Wallen, and Sleep Token. No matter the genre, fans were all experiencing the same scenario: they’d struggle through Ticketmaster’s ticket-buying process — leading to either being kicked-out of the onsale queue or placed in the infamous waitlist — just to reach a checkout page and find unattainable prices.
While there are various reasons for the surge in concert ticket prices, artists and promoters are the biggest culprits, as Live Nation and Ticketmaster have the ability to use algorithmic pricing tools like dynamic pricing to surge pricing based on market demands. Live Nation antitrust czar Dan Wall disagrees with assumptions that his company has anything to do with surging ticket prices, arguing that high prices are simply a natural progression of the event industry in its modern form.
