US Justice Department sues Live Nation-Ticketmaster
Make us a preferred source
Make us a preferred source on Google
The news: The US Justice Department (DoJ) filed an antitrust lawsuit on Thursday to break up the Live Nation-Ticketmaster ‘monopoly’ over alleged anti-competitive conduct in the live entertainment industry.
The numbers: According to the DoJ, Live Nation owns or controls more than 265 concert venues in North America, including more than 60 of the top 100 amphitheatres in the US. It generates over USD22 billion ($33.2 billion) globally in annual revenue from three business segments: concerts, ticketing, and sponsorship and advertising.
The context: The suit alleges that Live Nation-Ticketmaster illegally monopolised the live events industry through a range of anticompetitive activities. The complaint reads: “It is well understood across the live concert industry, as a result of Live Nation’s historical conduct and exactly as Live Nation intended, that choosing ticketers other than Ticketmaster carries enormous risk and financial pain.”
In a press release on the lawsuit, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the US 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.”
The tactics that the DoJ alleges Live Nation-Ticketmaster has been engaging in include: retaliating against potential new entrants, threatening and retaliating against venues that work with rivals, using exclusionary contracts to lock out competition, blocking venues from using multiple ticketers, restricting artists’ access to venues, among other accusations.
The complaint explains that competition regulators allowed Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge in 2010 subject to conditions, which “failed to restrain Live Nation and Ticketmaster from violating other antitrust laws in increasingly serious ways.”
The sources: DoJ press release, DoJ complaint, Bloomberg
