The defeat led to a US Senate hearing on ticketing industry consolidation. In May, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which it accused of abusing its alleged monopoly on tickets to crush competitors.
In a statement provided to Wired at the time, Live Nation disputed the claim. “The DOJ’s lawsuit will not address the issues fans are concerned about ticket prices, service fees, and access to these on-demand shows,” the company wrote. “Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the underlying economics of live entertainment, such as the fact that service fees are Share goes to venues, and that competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margins.”
The original lawsuit, brought by Swift’s fans, accused Ticketmaster and Live Nation of breach of contract, fraud, misrepresentation and antitrust violations. The complaint alleges that Ticketmaster broke its promise to make tickets available to fans who qualified for the presale. Meanwhile, by entering into exclusive agreements with major venues and forcing fans to resell tickets through its own resale marketplace, the lawsuit claims, Ticketmaster has created a monopoly that He increases the ticket prices for his financial gain.
“This case concerns anti-competitive conduct by Ticketmaster, to charge music concert attendees high prices in the presale, sale and resale markets,” the complaint states. “Ticketmaster has implemented this anti-competitive scheme by forcing music fans to use Ticketmaster exclusively for advance and sale prices, which are higher than the competitive market price.”
The new lawsuit is identical to the original federal lawsuit, but expands the scope to include fans of artists other than Taylor Swift and adds an alleged RICO violation to the list. The new charge rests on the premise that Ticketmaster and LiveNation partnered with partner organizations to dominate the market and suppress consumers, in a manner that meets the definition of an “enterprise” under the RICO Act.
“Live Nation and Ticketmaster leverage their relationships with stadium venues that are majority-owned by Live Nation to achieve their enterprise goals, and have done so since the Department of Justice nearly 1.5 years ago. Their merger was improperly approved a decade ago,” the complaint said.
