The debacle led to an interrogation in the US Senate on consolidation in the ticketing industry. In May, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit trying to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which it accused of abusing their alleged monopoly on ticket sales to trample competitors.
In a statement provided to WIRED at the time, Live Nation disputed the claim. “The Department of Justice’s lawsuit will not resolve fans’ concerns about ticket prices, service fees and access to in-demand programming,” the company wrote. “Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR victory for the Justice Department in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores basic principles of the live entertainment economy, such as the fact that most service fees go to venues and that competition continually erodes market share and Ticketmaster profit margin.”
The original lawsuit filed by Swift’s fans accused Ticketmaster and Live Nation of breach of contract, fraud, misrepresentation and antitrust violations. The complaint accuses Ticketmaster of breaking its promise to make tickets available to fans who qualified for advance sales. Meanwhile, by striking exclusive deals with huge venues and forcing fans to resell tickets through its own resale marketplace, Ticketmaster has established a monopoly through which it can inflate ticket prices for its own financial gain.
“The case concerns Ticketmaster’s anti-competitive conduct by charging higher prices to music concert-goers in the pre-sale, sales and resale markets,” the complaint reads. “Ticketmaster carried out this anti-competitive agenda by forcing musicians’ fans to use exclusively Ticketmaster to obtain pre-sale and sale prices that are above competitive market prices.”
The modern lawsuit is almost identical to the original federal case, but expands its scope to include fans of artists other than Taylor Swift and adds alleged RICO violations to the list. The modern allegation alleges that Ticketmaster and Live Nation collaborate with partner organizations to achieve market dominance and coerce consumers in a manner consistent with the definition of “enterprise” under the RICO Act.
“Live Nation and Ticketmaster exploit their relationships with each other and with Live Nation’s largely owned stadiums to further their corporate goals and have done so since the Department of Justice imprudently approved their merger nearly a decade and a half ago,” the complaint reads.