Live Nation Illegally Monopolized Ticketing Market, Jury Finds

A Manhattan federal jury found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally maintained monopoly power in the ticketing market. The findings follow an antitrust case brought by states after a separate DOJ settlement. CNN reports: The verdict was reached following a lengthy trial in New York federal court that included testimony from top executives in the music and entertainment industries. Jurors began deliberating on Friday. The Justice Department and 39 state attorneys general, including California and New York, and Washington, DC, sued Live Nation in 2024 alleging its combination with Ticketmaster and control of "virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem" have harmed fans, artists, and venues.

During the second week of trial, in a move that surprised even the judge, the Justice Department reached a secret settlement with Live Nation. A handful of states signed onto the deal, but more than two dozen proceeded to trial. Under the DOJ deal, Live Nation agreed to allow competitors, like SeatGeek or StubHub, to offer tickets to its events, cap ticketing service fees at 15%, and divest exclusive booking agreements with 13 amphitheaters. The deal includes a $280 million settlement fund for state damages claims for the handful of states that signed onto the deal. The DOJ settlement requires the judge's approval.

wild

[GoTeam]

That's just crazy! Why would a ticket seller/reseller do something like that? What would they gain?

Justice

[Iamthecheese]

Oh look, another monopoly settling for 1/10th of the extra money they made and pinkie swearing to never do it again.

What does this accomplish

[spacepimp]

It certainly looks like the secret agreement by the DOJ sold the entire lawsuit and US down the river. Ticketmaster gets 15% of all ticket sales and 13 amphitheaters in the US can divest themselves of exclusive booking. I assume this doesn't change a bit what their processing fees and handling fees add above the actual ticket price. On top of all of that, this legitimizes all of the worst behaviors this company had as a newly legalized form of customer fisting.

Ticket prices will always be market value

[FeelGood314]

If you want one of the 50 front row seats to Taylor swift and there are 50 people willing to spend $2000 on the seat, you are not going to get the seat for less than $2000. The market price for the front row is what the 50th highest person will pay.

Live Nation/Ticket Master are a scourge to the artists. The fans will always pay the market price. The artists were the ones getting screwed.

A Dutch auction is probably the fairest way to sell concert tickets. The sale price for the front row of Taylo

That's not actually how anything works

[rsilvergun]

And this is why I hate people who have blind Faith in the free market.

For the absolute top of the line acts like Taylor Swift the people get obsessed with going to see yeah you have a point.

If you go even one level below Taylor Swift you have a curious situation.

You can actually go to a concert and it's sold out but half empty. That's because you have a concert with a thousand seats and each ticket is being sold for $100 in order to guarantee a sell out, however scalpers buy all the tickets and sell them for $300 each because there's 500 people that will pay that and 500 people that will just skip going at that price.

This isn't theoretical bands have been complaining about this for years because what happens is they have a sell-out show and then they can't sell any merchandise because hardly anyone showed up to their sold-out show. And since a lot of bands make their living off merch sold at shows that basically wrecks them.

I forget which band but one of them that brought it up had shows where maybe 10% of their fans made it to what was on paper was sold out show. It bankrupted them.

So yeah Taylor Swift doesn't have any problems but plenty of bands do. If you've got a smaller band you like that isn't touring there's a good chance that's why.

Our current pretend free market economy has all sorts of nasty little perverse incentives like that.

stop blaming the free market

[FeelGood314]

Scalpers are a market failure. I already said that. Instead of throwing out the free market and replacing it with what - communism? Ration tickets? Lotteries? We need to figure out what the market failure is and how to correct it. In the case of scalpers the original seller is selling the product at less than what the scalpers think they are worth. The problem is that the original seller doesn't know the market price. Information has a cost. In the old days, scalpers were a good thing for both artis

Scalpers are doing what the market does

[rsilvergun]

They are absolutely not a market failure they are the inevitable result of the market.

We recognize that fact decades ago and we created laws to regulate the market. Because we recognized that the market does not regulate itself and cannot function in a free and open system. Like a sports game it needs a referee and that's the government and the bureaucrats.

The problem here is in the market failure it's a government failure. We stopped and forcing antitrust law and this is where it gets us. You have a single ticket seller and a small handful of venue owners and they can work with the scalpers to create the current situation that maximizes their profits at the expense of consumers and musicians.

Remember the new owners and record companies love scalpers because they are guaranteed to sell out all the tickets and they can move any risk onto the scalper. This is only possible because a lack of antitrust law enforcement means record companies and venue owners can have a low quality product and then avoid competition by buying up competitors or using their market dominance to run competitors out of business

ticket Lotteries fixes the rush buy issues and mak

[Joe_Dragon]

ticket Lotteries fixes the rush buy issues and makes it more fair but no we have people doing BS like well if you pay like $1000 then we give you the right to buy an ticket at list price for the next X years and you get to skip the rush to sell out in an few min.

Re:

[larryjoe]

And this is why I hate people who have blind Faith in the free market.

I have a decent amount of faith in the functionality of a free market. It's just that truly free markets are not that common. How many markets are there where buyers and sellers can easily enter and leave the market and all prices are perfectly known to all buyers and sellers? It's really hard to think of even one market that is truly free.

Re:

[Sique]

In a truly free market, I can always spend money hire a bunch of thugs and hit you on the head if you don't sell to my conditions. And that's where the term Freedom hits a snag.

A little demand destruction

[hwstar]

would be healthy here. But alas, people willing to outbid others destroys any form of pricing sanity. This folks is why I haven't been to a concert since the 80's.

The thing is, concerts aren't something you need to prevent dying of starvation or thirst yet their artificially inflated pricing seems to indicate that they are absolutely necessary for survival.

If you want to be entertained by music, either play your own, or go to open mic concerts. At least you get the chance to directly contribute to the artist in an open mic concert and not some nameless corporate bureaucracy.

Re:Ticket prices will always be market value

[nealric]

That may be true in theory, but many artists have goals beyond maximizing ticket revenue for a specific concert. Artists (especially less famous ones) may be more interested in building a fan base than squeezing every cent from their limited (to date) fan base. Other more established artists may just not care as much about the money and just want the fans to be able to have a good time. Pearl Jam famously tried to do a Ticketmaster-free tour with cheap seats and ran into all sorts of obstacles.

With the Dutch auction, people would try to avoid ever buying a ticket until the last minute, which would mean the venues and artists could not count on concert revenue.

People will definitely not wait till last minute

[FeelGood314]

If you were willing to pay $400 for tickets for yourself and your kids to see a concert would you really wait till the tickets were $200 and risk not getting them? This is entertainment, discretionary spending. Most people will not try and game the system. Most people are risk averse and will want to plan their evening in advance. This also means the artists who might not sell out likely will even if the last seats sell for only $5. It even makes it possible for bands that wouldn't normally be viable t

Service Fees

[TwistedGreen]

Only a 15% service fee? Even that's obscene. So if they sell a $100 ticket, they're going to charge $15 in service fees? For what? Should be a flat fee capped at something reasonable like $5.

Re:

[PseudoThink]

Not to mention all the extra labor and effort it takes to sell a $200 ticket than a $100 ticket. So their 15% addon fees will scale with ticket price instead of with their actual costs, since they have no competition to motivate them to do otherwise.

Re: Service Fees

[rayzat]

I have no love for Ticketmaster and 15% might be high, but I'm not sure how much lower it can actually go. Their end does cover credit card processing, the ticket delivery platform, the ticket checking platform, and certain other fees and expenses. They state that 2/3rds of their fees go to the venue and others. They also cover the gap between people getting their money and the net terms from the credit card company as well as any charge back and fraud coverage.

Re:

[anoncoward69]

If you're not aware. Livenation / Ticketmaster is also in the business of building / operating / purchasing venues. So that 2/3rds also comes to them once they get their hands on the venue.

Re:

[bugs2squash]

Their service fee will be 15% but I imagine there will then be other add-ons - a credit surcharge, ticket "insurance", a "convenience adder", a "seat wear premium", "exchange rate guarantee" - when it's all added up I imagine the total fees, surcharges, compulsary insurances and other things that are fees but not "fees" will dwarf the "service fee".

I wonder how Trump will overrule this

[rsilvergun]

I'm assuming they will just write it up to the supreme Court and they will find another which finder general from the 16th century to declare the states somehow don't have the right to regulate antitrust law enforcement violations in their borders.

It's more about the crazy convoluted way our current supreme Court reaches its conclusions than anything else.

Fun fact in order to allow moonshining we are about to completely upend almost 100 years of jurisprudence going back to FDR and eliminate the legal basis for banning child labor Nationwide. I know a bunch of right wingers think that's cool because fuck those little kids (and I don't mean the way Trump does I mean in the pejorative sense) but now guess what you suddenly have a huge increase in the number of people in the labor force that you're going to have to compete with for jobs.

And if you are a right winger it's entirely possible a 12-year-old can do your job because statistically speaking that's the level you read at. I tell you to look that up but well, I mean you read at a sixth grade level. That's going to be a tall order for you...

Meh

[sit1963nz]

So yet another "cost of doing business" settlement that actually benefits no one.

They will just start up another company hidden by a shell company somewhere that pretends to "compete" and slowly drive the others out of business

Re:

[anoncoward69]

Pretty sure livenation was initially a hidden shell company then they just got brazen and "merged" the two.

So whats the outcome?

[anoncoward69]

I expect we'll be lucky to get a $5 voucher off our next ticket purchase.

Re:

[anoncoward69]

Probably exactly what they'll do. Give everyone a $5 voucher, at the same time jack the service fee up by $5 and call it a day.

Re:

[anoncoward69]

Maybe 5% off the service fee of next ticket purchase.