The U.S. Department of Justice Monday announced a tentative settlement of its part of an antitrust lawsuit against Beverly Hills-based Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment over what the DOJ alleged was unlawful dominance over the concert ticket sales industry.
The allegations stemmed from a probe into the November 2022 ticket presale debacle for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
The lawsuit, filed two years ago in federal court in the Southern District of New York by the DOJ and a coalition of nearly 30 states including California, accuses the company of creating a monopoly over the live entertainment market that has harmed music fans, artists and promoters around the United States through higher prices and frustrating consumer experiences.
The trial in the case started Feb. 28, and following the DOJ’s settlement announcement, the coalition asked the court to declare a mistrial indicating it would continue the lawsuit.
Live Nation commended the DOJ’s settlement efforts.
“Today marks a major step in improving the concert experience for artists and fans throughout the United States,” Michael Rapino, Live Nation’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “Live Nation is proud to lead the way enhancing this experience with our amphitheaters, which will be open to all promoters, allowing these promoters to decide how best to distribute up to 50% of the tickets, and capping ticketing service fees at 15%.
“By giving artists greater flexibility in choosing their promotional partners and ticketing strategy while also keeping the cost of a concert more affordable for fans, we are putting more power where it should be — with artists and fans.”
Ticketmaster, which controls more than 70% of the market for ticketing and live events, crashed during the first day of sales for the Swift tour, leaving millions of fans ticketless or left to seek higher-priced tickets on the secondary market.
The lawsuit accuses Live Nation of seeking to lock out competitors by using restrictive contracts and exclusive agreements with venues, allegedly preventing concert halls from switching to rival ticketing systems.
Rapino said Live Nation will be divesting its 13 exclusive booking agreements with amphitheaters nationwide. All owned and operated amphitheaters will continue to be operated by Live Nation as open venues, promoting competition and maximizing show volume, according to the company’s statement.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday the coalition of plaintiffs would continue with the antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation/Ticketmaster, rejecting the DOJ’s settlement days into trial. The states plan to continue the fight to hold the concert giant accountable for “harming consumers and the live music industry though its anticompetitive conduct,” he said.
“Today, U.S. DOJ has chosen to settle with Live Nation, but a bipartisan group of attorneys general, including California, have chosen to continue this fight and get a better deal for consumers — the deal Americans nationwide deserve,” Bonta said in a statement.
“Just in the first week of trial, we’ve already heard that Live Nation fully intended to take advantage of fans — and were able to do so because fans had no other place to go. Live Nation has manipulated the market, made itself untouchable by any competitor, and raked in the cash — not because it is better, but because it has acted illegally and created a monopoly.”
When the lawsuit was filed, Live Nation denied the company controls the market. The company said the lawsuit “ignores everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices, from increasing production costs to artist popularity, to 24/7 online ticket scalping that reveals the public’s willingness to pay far more than primary tickets cost.”
“It blames Live Nation and Ticketmaster for high service charges, but ignores that Ticketmaster retains only a modest portion of those fees. In fact, primary ticketing is one of the least expensive digital distributions in the economy.”
Among other remedies, the lawsuit seeks to force Live Nation to divest Ticketmaster, and to have the company ordered to compensate fans who were allegedly overcharged for tickets, leading fans to pay more than they would have in a different market for tickets.