The Department of Justice is preparing to file a sweeping anti-trust lawsuit against Ticketmaster, as well as its parent company Live Nation Entertainment, accusing the nation’s largest concert promoter of having an illegal monopoly on access to live events.
According to DOJ sources speaking anonymously with The Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit is expected to be filed as soon as the first week of May and will charge Live Nation with anti-competitive business practices. The specific claims of the case have not yet been disclosed.
In 2010, the DOJ opted not to challenge a controversial merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation in exchange for certain concessions by the company. When the approval was granted, critics of the merger argued that Live Nation, which owned or ran 135 concert venues around the world at the time, would pressure those venues into exclusivity deals with its new ticketing division, preventing other sellers from offering better deals.
A legal order from the DOJ at the time of the merger placed a 10-year ban on this practice, but this has reportedly not stopped Live Nation from engaging in other forms of anti-competitive behavior, ranging from exorbitant ticket fees to substandard customer service.
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The DOJ investigation into Ticketmaster and Live Nation began in earnest in late 2022 when the ticketing service crashed during a presale for pop singer Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.” Once access to the sale was restored for hundreds of thousands of fans around the world, Ticketmaster continued to face complaints for massively inflating the cost of tickets to Swift’s shows.
Neither company has publicly responded to reports of the impending lawsuit, but Live Nation’s head of corporate affairs Dan Wall published an essay last month denying that the company engages in monopolistic practices, saying that artists and venues are the ones setting the prices and raking in most of the fees.
Following news of the DOJ’s suit, Live Nation shares dropped by about 6 percent during Monday trading.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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