Live Nation Entertainment and the Department of Justice have reached a settlement regarding their alleged monopoly of the live entertainment industry and antitrust violations. While the case was set to begin trial last week, the company agreed to several changes in business practice and was able to make a settlement out of court.
Live Nation Entertainment is an entertainment company founded in 2010 after the event promoter and venue operator Live Nation merged with the ticket sales and distribution company Ticketmaster. Live Nation owns over 250 venues and manages 60% of concert promotions nationwide, while Ticketmaster controls about 80% of ticket sales.
The merged companies have been accused of threatening venues that use competitors, buying out rivals and requiring those who use Live Nation venues to also use Ticketmaster to sell tickets.
The problems came to a peak in 2022, when Taylor Swift announced her Eras Tour. Fans jumped at the chance to see the highly popular artist, but tickets quickly sold out in the presale. Initially, tickets sold for a maximum of approximately $1000, but scalpers who purchased swathes of seats resold them for up to several thousand dollars.
Two individuals in particular managed to hack 900 tickets and resell them for a profit of $635,000. In the wake of the chaos, the Justice Department and a coalition of states accused Live Nation of monopolizing the industry and antitrust violations.
Before starting a trial, the Justice Department and several of the states’ representatives reached a settlement with Live Nation Entertainment out of court. There are a few benefits fans can expect to see from the settlement, such as 15% service fee caps and greater transparency with the artists regarding their ticket sales.
Despite the settlement, there are still concerns regarding Live Nation Entertainment and its business practices, and many expressed dissatisfaction with the settlement terms.
For example, the cap on service fees means that Ticketmaster will likely move to mitigate losses by either offering the artists a smaller cut of the sales or raising ticket prices even more. Several lawyers representing states in the case refused the settlement and expressed their intent to continue to pursue legal action against Live Nation Entertainment.
With concert goers still generally forced to purchase tickets through Ticketmaster, there are also concerns with the status of the actual website itself. During the sale for the Eras Tour tickets, the website crashed, leaving fans logged out of their accounts or frozen in the queue.
Ticketmaster credited the tech problems to an unprecedented number of fans registered for presale and was obliged to cancel the general sale due to a lack of tickets.
Furthermore, recent conversations between Ben Baker and Jeff Weinhold, two regional directors of ticketing for Live Nation, have brought to light the company’s view towards fans. In the conversation, Baker said customers are “so stupid” for paying inflated costs and bragged that Live Nation is “Robbing them blind, baby.”
In part of the official statement in response, Live Nation stated that “The Slack exchange from one junior staffer to a friend absolutely doesn’t reflect our values or how we operate.”
However, unless Live Nation Entertainment takes measurable steps to make changes and show they value artists and fans, the statement is without credibility.
