The US Department of Justice has sued Ticketmaster and its dad or mum firm, Live Nation Entertainment, for abusing their alleged monopoly within the ticketing market to trample rivals.
Filed on Thursday within the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit focuses on Ticketmaster’s long-term exclusivity contracts with lots of the largest music venues, making it the predominant ticketing service accessible to concertgoers. The agency secures these offers partly by “threatening and retaliating in opposition to venues that work with rivals,” the DOJ alleges.
In the grievance, the DOJ accuses Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which acts as a promoter for lots of of high-profile artists, of exploiting their relationship to set up a “self-reinforcing flywheel” that blocks rivals from gaining a foothold. Live Nation parlays its unique promotion offers into unique ticketing offers with venues, the DOJ claims, that are left with no sensible selection however to go together with Ticketmaster, for worry of dropping entry to sought-after acts represented by its dad or mum firm. The DOJ is in search of to break up the joint group.
We allege that Live Nation depends on illegal, anticompetitive conduct to train its monopolistic management over the stay occasions trade within the United States at the price of followers, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” says legal professional common Merrick Garland in a press release. “The result’s that followers pay extra in charges, artists have fewer alternatives to play concert events, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer actual selections for ticketing providers. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”
Live Nation declined to remark.
The fees introduced by the DOJ mirror allegations made beforehand in opposition to Ticketmaster in two ongoing personal lawsuits.
In December 2022, Ticketmaster was sued by lots of of Taylor Swift followers, who introduced a case in response to a high-profile ticketing debacle that reportedly left them queuing for hours to pay for tickets that they’d been assigned underneath an early entry program, with many finally unable to declare their allocations. The incident led to a listening to by the Senate Judiciary Committee on consolidation within the ticketing trade and, reportedly, helped catalyze the investigation into Ticketmaster by the DOJ.
In their lawsuit, the Swift followers accused Ticketmaster of abusing its dominant place to impose “larger costs within the presale, sale and resale marketplace for live performance tickets.” The firm has “effectuated this anticompetitive scheme by forcing followers of musicians to use Ticketmaster completely to purchase live performance tickets,” the lawsuit alleged.
In the second case, a category motion introduced in 2022 on behalf of Ticketmaster prospects within the US, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are accused of abusing the complementary relationship between their providers to overcharge customers and maintain their monopoly. “Live Nation controls the overwhelming majority of the large nationwide touring acts and, both explicitly or implicitly, coerces live performance venues into choosing Ticketmaster as their ticketing service supplier on ache of dropping high-value acts,” claims Adam Wolfson, a accomplice at Quinn Emanuel, the regulation agency representing the plaintiffs.
