After years of complaints from fans, artists, politicians, and the entertainment industry, the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment. In the lawsuit, joined by attorneys general for 29 states and the District of Columbia, the DOJ alleges that the company formed by the 2010 merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster has used its unparalleled power in the live events industry to take advantage of consumers and cut out the competition.
The Justice Department called Live Nation Entertainment a monopoly, claiming that the company used its arm that represents musicians to leverage deals with venues to book their artists—or face financial retribution. Likewise, Live Nation stands accused of locking venues into exclusionary contracts requiring them to book Live Nation artists and sell tickets through Ticketmaster. This, the government says, has caused ticket prices to grow astronomically for customers and stymied healthy competition in the industry.
“Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release. “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.”
Live Nation’s vertically integrated model has allowed it to become the largest entertainment company in the United States. The government claims Live Nation directly manages over 400 musical artists and controls 60% of concert promotions at major venues and 80% of ticketing. The company has also recently begun reaching into the secondary ticketing market.
The DOJ also alleges that Live Nation colluded with the Oak View Group to steer clients into exclusionary deals. Former Live Nation chairman Irving Azoff founded Oak View Group, and the government provided emails showing how the company was actively deterred from bidding against Live Nation when booking tours. Similarly, Oak View used its influence to pressure venues to sign deals with Ticketmaster.
In its response, Live Nation denied that it was a monopoly and called the government’s accusations “baseless,” claiming their actions would only further hurt the events industry. The company claims that breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster—which is what the lawsuit calls for—would not quell rising ticket prices or excessive fees, which the suit referred to as “essentially a ‘Ticketmaster Tax’ that ultimately raise the price fans pay.”
“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 basic economics of live entertainment, such as the fact that the bulk of service fees go to venues, and that competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margin,” Live Nation said in a statement.
The company’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs Dan Wall said the suit was a result of “intense political pressure” and that the DOJ is ignoring the real factors contributing to higher ticket prices including increased production costs, artist popularity, and online scalping. According to Live Nation, artists and sports teams are the ones setting prices and they, along with concert venues, take home the lion’s share of fees and surcharges.
The Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger was approved in 2010 under certain conditions written to keep the company from dominating the industry. In 2019, Live Nation was found by the Justice Department to have violated those terms, however, the merger agreement was still extended with slightly modified terms. The DOJ began investigating Live Nation for antitrust violations in 2022, not long before a disastrous pre-sale for Taylor Swift‘s The Eras Tour left millions ticketless and angry. Congress consequently held a hearing with representatives from Live Nation, other ticketing platforms, and music industry professionals where numerous politicians called Live Nation a monopoly. Since then, President Joe Biden went on a crusade against “junk fees“—forcing Ticketmaster to adopt all-in pricing with no surprise fees at the end of a transaction—and earlier this month the House of Representatives passed the TICKET Act which aims to increase transparency in the live events industry.
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