WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Thursday for operating an illegal monopoly on live events in the U.S., asking the court to dismantle a system that stifles competition and inflates prices for fans.
The wide-ranging antitrust lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, brought with 30 state and local attorneys general, seeks to break up a monopoly that they say crowds out smaller promoters, hurts artists and drowns ticket buyers in fees. Ticketmaster and its owner, Live Nation Entertainment, have a long history of clashes with big-name artists, including Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen, and their fans.
“It's time for fans and artists to stop paying the price of Live Nation's monopoly,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. “It's time to bring competition and innovation back to the entertainment industry. It's time to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.”
The government condemned Live Nation's tactics, including intimidation and retaliation, which Garland said have allowed the entertainment giant to “stifle competitors” by controlling nearly every aspect of the entertainment world, from concert promotion to ticket sales. The effect, the attorney general said, is evident in “an endless laundry list of fees imposed on fans.”
“Live music shouldn't be only available to those who can pay the Ticketmaster tax,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Cantor of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division.
Ricky Parritti and Jacob DeLong of Detroit said they recently used Ticketmaster to spend about $1,200 on three tickets to a Shania Twain concert and about $370 to see RuPaul's Drag Race Live.
“I think ticket prices have definitely gone up, but I also think the various fees that Ticketmaster charges when you order have definitely driven the prices up,” Parritti said.
DeLong said he respects the artists' work but that the cost to see the show is “ridiculous” because of the extra fees.
“Where can we take a break?” he said.
Live Nation, which has long denied any antitrust violations, said the lawsuit “does not resolve issues that fans care about, like ticket prices, service fees and access to popular shows.”
“While casting Ticketmaster as a monopoly may be a short-term PR win for the Department of Justice, it will lose in court because it ignores the fundamental economics of live entertainment,” Live Nation added. The company said the majority of its service fees go to venues and that outside competition has “steadily eroded” Ticketmaster's market share. The company said it would defend against the “baseless assertions.”
The Justice Department said Live Nation's anticompetitive practices included using long-term contracts to prevent venues from choosing rival companies, preventing venues from using multiple ticket sellers and threatening venues with losses if they did not choose Ticketmaster.
According to the Justice Department's complaint, the concert industry giant threatened financial retaliation against one of its subsidiaries in 2021 if the company didn't stop competing with Live Nation for artist promotion contracts. Live Nation also bought out smaller promoters it perceived as a threat, officials said.
Michael Carrier, a Rutgers Law School antitrust professor, called the Justice Department's case strong. He expects Live Nation will “try to shift the blame” by arguing that prices are set by artists and venues, but he said those explanations are weak.
“The Department of Justice has laid bare the extent to which Live Nation has a real hand in each element of the supply chain, meaning it has far more control than it has publicly disclosed,” he said. “And in terms of justification, Live Nation has very little to offer in terms of how it's helping consumers.”
The lawsuit says Live Nation and Ticketmaster are being considered for breakup. Carrier said that, combined with other measures like banning exclusivity deals that stifle competition, it could mean lower ticket prices for fans and more freedom for artists to choose venues, which could help smaller promoters succeed in the long run.
Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation in 2010, is the world's largest seller of tickets for live music, sports and theater events. The company said in its annual report last month that it had distributed more than 620 million tickets through the Ticketmaster system in 2023.
About 70% of tickets to major U.S. concert venues are sold through Ticketmaster, according to data from federal lawsuits filed by consumers in 2022. The company owns or manages more than 265 concert venues and dozens of top amphitheaters in North America, according to the Department of Justice.
According to Live Nation's annual financial reports, the company's business has grown significantly over the past decade. Between the end of 2014 and the end of 2023, Live Nation reported that the number of venues worldwide in which it “owns, leases, operates, has exclusive booking rights or has a significant equity interest” increased by more than 136%.
The ticket seller sparked outrage in November 2022 when its site crashed during a pre-sale event for Taylor Swift's stadium tour. The company said the site was overrun with both fans and bot attacks, with the bots posing as consumers to buy up tickets and sell them on secondary sites. The debacle prompted congressional hearings and bills in state legislatures aimed at strengthening consumer protections.
The Justice Department allowed the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger to go ahead as long as Live Nation agreed not to retaliate against venues that used other ticketing companies for the next 10 years. In 2019, the Justice Department conducted an investigation that found Live Nation had repeatedly violated this agreement. The government subsequently extended the ban on retaliation against venues until 2025.
“This is an antitrust failure of the past, and it's something that's cheating customers every day,” said John Kuoka, an economics professor at Northeastern University who also served as a consultant to the state that investigated the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger in 2009 alongside the Justice Department.
Kwoka, a longtime advocate of breakup, noted that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have gone “largely unsupervised” over the past 15 years.
Ticketmaster's clashes with artists and fans go back 30 years: Pearl Jam attacked the company in 1994, years before its merger with Live Nation, but the Department of Justice ultimately did not bring a lawsuit. More recently, Bruce Springsteen fans were infuriated by inflated ticket prices caused by the platform's dynamic pricing system.
Live Nation has maintained that artists and their teams set prices and decide how tickets are sold. Dan Wall, the company's executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, said in a statement Thursday that factors including rising production costs, artist popularity and online ticket resales “are actually contributing to inflated ticket prices.”
The lawsuit filed by the Justice Department on Thursday is the latest example of the Biden administration's aggressive antitrust enforcement, which targets companies it says engage in illegal monopoly practices that shut out competitors and inflate prices. The Justice Department sued Apple in March, alleging that the company has monopoly power in the smartphone market. The Democratic administration is also taking on Google, Amazon and other big tech companies.
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Grantham Phillips reported from New York. Associated Press writers Michelle Chapman and Maria Sherman in New York, Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and videojournalist Ty O'Neill in Las Vegas contributed.
