Justice Division to sue Ticketmaster proprietor Reside Nation in antitrust lawsuit

The Division of Justice is reportedly planning to sue Reside Nation, father or mother firm of Ticketmaster, over claims that the reside occasion promoter has violated antitrust legal guidelines.

The potential lawsuit was first reported by the Wall Road Journal.

Reside Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, making a reside occasion promoter monolith that dwarfed all competitors.

Ticketmaster controls greater than 80 per cent of the marketplace for major ticket gross sales in the USA. It maintains that management by placing offers with the nation’s largest venues, making certain that any occasions held are ticketed by way of their firm.

The corporate has confronted ongoing complaints about excessive ticket costs, charges, and stories of customer support failures. In November 2022, its web site crashed throughout the presale of Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour”.

Swift mentioned she was livid that her followers “felt like they needed to undergo a number of bear assaults” to safe their tickets from Ticketmaster, and that the dearth of recourse for the corporate’s blunder annoyed her.

“It is actually tough for me to belief an outdoor entity with these [fan] relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to only watch errors occur with no recourse,” Swift mentioned.

The incident went viral on social media and caught the eye of Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who referred to as out the corporate for allegedly performing to forestall competitors.

“Each day reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation ought to by no means have been authorised, they usually have to be reigned in,” she wrote on Twitter. “Break them up.”

Now evidently the Division of Justice could also be making an attempt to just do that.

Reside Nation and Ticketmaster have gone on the defensive over the past a number of weeks. Dan Wall, Reside Nation’s company affairs boss, argued in an essay that ticket costs are set by the artists, not the corporate.

A Ticketmaster spokesman additionally instructed the Wall Road Journal that the corporate has loads of competitors — greater than ever earlier than, she claims.

“Ticketmaster has extra competitors right now than it has ever had, and the deal phrases with venues present it has nothing near monopoly energy,” the spokesman mentioned.