WASHINGTON (TND) — The Justice Department announced it would be moving forward with a lawsuit seeking to break up entertainment giant Live Nation and its dominating grasp on the market for tickets to popular performers at the country’s largest venues in a move that could remake how consumers get tickets to see shows.
DOJ’s lawsuit was joined by 30 states and accuses Live Nation of using its market share power to stomp out competition and retaliate against promoters and venues that threaten its position as the leader in the marketplace, teeing off a legal battle that was more than a decade in the making.
“It is time for fans and artists to stop paying the price for Live Nation’s monopoly,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday. “It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster. The American people are ready for it.”
Justice department lawyers will face a high bar if they seek to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger and will have to convince a court that the company violated antitrust laws and that those actions were so widespread that all other remedies wouldn’t help restore competition.
While DOJ officials said that the lawsuit would make prices cheaper for consumers hoping to see a show, there are significant questions as to whether succeeding in court would actually make that a reality.
Live Nation has been adamant that it is not a monopoly and said in a lengthy blog post published Thursday that its market share had declined since 2010. The company has tried to steer blame on high prices toward the artists and venues and said that the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit will do nothing to address the problem of demand outweighing the supply of tickets.
“It ignores everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices, from rising production costs, to artist popularity, to 24/7 online ticket scalping that reveals the public’s willingness to pay far more than primary ticket prices,” wrote Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs.
Wall also said that artists and teams set the prices, not its subsidiary Ticketmaster, which are subject to the pressures of supply and demand. Service and convenience fees that have been a source of frustration for consumers, lawmakers and attorneys general, but Live Nation claims that most of those go to venues.
Industry experts have also said the lawsuit is unlikely to fix the biggest issue facing consumers when trying to see their favorite acts: skyrocketing ticket prices and scarcity in being able to secure one.
“Generally, I think this lawsuit is more about politics than it is about helping music fans. The real issue keeping costs high and supply low when it comes to the hottest tours is a basic one of supply and demand. Even then, if we wanted to ticket prices or give artists more control, we could address that legislatively through caps on resale,” said Bill Werde, director of Syracuse University’s Bandier music business program and author of the Full Rate No Cap newsletter.
The complaints about Live Nation and Ticketmaster are not new but were significantly ramped up due to the popularity of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour that sold out shows in cities around the world with massive ticket prices and significantly more demand for tickets than any stadium or arena could offer.
A debacle on Ticketmaster’s presale of Swift’s tour last year left millions of people unable to buy tickets and sparked a congressional hearing with lawmakers in both parties directing blame and frustration at the ticketing giant.
“The Justice Department is doing the right thing. It is way past time to break up Live Nation/Ticketmaster. Hidden fees, poor service, a stranglehold on competition are all bad for fans. Our Senate judiciary hearing set the stage. Now we need to get this done,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in a post on X.
The announcement of lawsuit was also welcomed by some Republicans.
“Good news. For years, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have wielded monopoly power, harming fans & artists. Obama's DOJ failed to challenge the merger in 2010,” said Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. “As I argued in our hearing last year, they should have tackled this years ago. Today, finally, DOJ is filing a lawsuit.”
One of the business practices being challenged in the lawsuit are exclusive ticketing contracts Ticketmaster holds with some of the largest venues that are where the most high-profile stars typically perform. Live Nation also does not allow competing promoters from booking venues that it owns or operates, which the DOJ argues further constrains the amount of tickets available and sends prices even higher.
Ticketmaster’s service fees, a major source of irritation for fans already paying high prices to see shows, are also being targeted in the lawsuit in what the DOJ described as “essentially a ‘Ticketmaster Tax.’” Live Nation has already faced pressure from the White House over those fees and has agreed to show prices that included all its charges.
Live Nation has argued that it and Ticketmaster only retain a modest portion of those fees, and there are questions as to whether eliminating them would actually make a difference in the final price of entry.
“The bottom line is, the costs associated with the whole supply chain from artist to promoter to ticketing to venue aren’t going to change. So if revenue drops out in one place, it’s likely to pop up somewhere else. In this case, that will likely show up in the form of a percentage increase on ticket costs,” Werde said.
