U.S. Senators Advocate for Probe of Live Nation’s Excessive Fees For Tickets

WASHINGTON (CelebrityAccess) – Senators Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar, each Democratic and each energetic in antitrust, wrote to the USA Justice Division on Tuesday – urging officers to analyze potential anti-competitive actions by Reside Nation (LN). Reside Nation owns ticketing goliath Ticketmaster (TM).

This isn’t the primary time lawmakers have referred to as for an investigation into the 2 firms and their ticketing practices. An August 2019 letter was despatched by Blumenthal and Klobuchar to Mr. Makan Delrahim, Assistant Lawyer Basic, Antitrust Division citing the identical considerations. As well as, a 2020 letter from Invoice Pascrell (D-NJ), together with the chairs of 4 Home committees – Jerry Nadler – Judiciary Committee (D-NY), Frank Pallone Jr. – Home Vitality and Commerce (D-NJ), Jan Schakowsky – Client Safety and Commerce Subcommittee and David Cicilline – Antitrust Subcommittee (D-RI) was despatched to Lawyer Basic Merrick Garland and Appearing Federal Commerce Fee Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, citing the merger and subsequent ticketing practices and costs have “strangled competitors in stay leisure ticketing and harmed customers and should be revisited,” as reported by Deadline.

The Senators famous the corporate’s earlier violation of an settlement with the Justice Division that allowed the controversial merger of LN and TM again in 2010. On the time, LN agreed to cease retaliating towards venues that didn’t use TM for each occasion, as reported by U.S. News. They requested the division to evaluate LN’s present compliance with the up to date settlement.

“As stay occasions proceed to open up, American customers are confronting skyrocketing ticket costs, opaque phrases, and exorbitant charges. But stay leisure markets, particularly ticket markets, are dominated by one company, Reside Nation, which cemented its dominance via its 2010 merger with Ticketmaster,” they wrote to Jonathan Kanter, head of the Justice Division Antitrust Division.

“We’re deeply involved that the Division’s previous enforcement and negotiated cures on this business have didn’t adequately foster and shield competitors in stay leisure and ticketing markets,” they wrote. In 2010, the 2 firms merged and purchased unparalleled dominance inside the stay music business as TM controls 80% of the ticketing market and LN manages over 500 main music artists.

LN’s web site says the next:

“The usual tickets bought on Reside Nation are owned by our shoppers (venues, sports activities groups, or different occasion promoters) who decide the variety of tickets to be bought and set the face worth worth. Within the case of resale tickets, itemizing costs are decided by the vendor, which might embrace followers or season ticket holders. Notice that for sure occasions, Reside Nation will not be the first ticket supplier.

In some situations, occasions on our platform might have tickets which can be “market-priced,” so ticket and price costs might regulate over time primarily based on demand. That is just like how airline tickets and lodge rooms are bought and are generally known as “Dynamic Pricing.”

Ticket charges (which might embrace a service price, order processing price, and typically a supply price) are decided in collaboration with our shoppers. In trade for the rights to promote their tickets, our shoppers sometimes share in a portion of the charges we acquire. The portion of charges we maintain helps us to supply our shoppers with software program, gear, providers, and help to handle their tickets and field workplace and supply the gross sales community utilized by shoppers to distribute tickets to followers. The rest, when taken with different revenues, is how we earn a revenue.“

In January 2022, a gaggle of 4 Plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit in a California federal court docket alleging the 2 firms cost customers inflated service charges for tickets to occasions at main live performance venues. “The mixed Reside Nation/Ticketmaster behemoth has huge, and distinctive, market energy in main ticketing and live performance promotion providers, and has proven it’s unafraid to make use of that energy,” the category motion lawsuit states. That is the second lawsuit from legislation agency Quinn Emanuel, who mounted an analogous case towards LN and TM in 2020, which ended with a ruling in favor of the conglomerate. Appeals to that ruling are nonetheless pending.