US sues Ticketmaster owner Live Nation and seeks break-up of alleged monopoly

The US Department of Justice has sued the owner of Ticketmaster, Live Nation, seeking a break-up of the concert promotion and ticketing giant.

“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” said Merrick Garland, the US attorney general. “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.”

Thursday’s lawsuit, filed in the southern district of New York , follows years of scrutiny of Live Nation’s domination of global ticket sales. Attorneys general from 29 states and Washington DC joined the lawsuit.

The company, which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010, faced a torrent of criticism in the wake of the botched sale of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in 2022. As fury over the debacle mounted, officials are said to have started an antitrust investigation.

Live Nation has used a monopoly to suppress competition, the justice department and a string of states alleged in a court filing.

Lawmakers have accused the company of sky-high fees, poor customer service and anticompetitive practices.

Allegations in the lawsuit include that Live Nation has worked with a venue management firm to steer clients into signing exclusive agreements with Ticketmaster, that it has threatened retaliation and acquired startups to stop competition, that it signs long-term exclusive agreements with venues that prevent them from using any potential competitors and that Ticketmaster became the default ticketing platform for several entertainment artists because LiveNation controls a large share of the venues where they perform.

“The live music industry in America is broken because Live Nation-Ticketmaster has an illegal monopoly,” said Jonathan Kanter, an assistant attorney general with the justice department’s antitrust division in a press release. “Our antitrust lawsuit seeks to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopoly and restore competition for the benefit of fans and artists.”

During a press conference announcing the lawsuit, Garland described his own experience as a senior in college of attending a Bonnie Raitt concert, and seeing Bruce Springsteen open for her.

“The justice department filed this lawsuit on behalf of fans who should be able to go to concerts without a monopoly standing in their way,” he said. “We have filed this lawsuit on behalf of artists who should be able to plan their tours around their fans and not be dictated by an unlawful monopolists. We have filed this lawsuit on behalf of the independent promoters and venues which should be able to compete on a level playing field. And we have filed this lawsuit on behalf of the American people.”.

But Live Nation has repeatedly pushed back against claims that it is in effect a monopoly, arguing that it has “very little to do” with high ticket prices.

Live Nation said in response to the lawsuit, “We will defend against these baseless allegations, use this opportunity to shed light on the industry, and continue to push for reforms that truly protect consumers and artists.”

After the 2022 mishandling of Swift ticket sales, Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, told the Wall Street Journal that the fiasco “converted more Gen Z’ers into antimonopolists overnight than anything I could have done”. When “firms become dominant, they become too big to care”, she claimed.