- Lawmakers and Swifties are calling for the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger to be reexamined.
- The Department of Justice was reportedly investigating the merger prior to the Eras Tour madness.
As the dust settles on Taylor Swift's Eras Tour ticket madness, some fans — and lawmakers — are still pushing for a systemic change: They want to unwind the 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
Look no further than the lawsuit that some Swifties have filed, where plaintiffs allege that "anticompetitive behavior has substantially harmed and will continue to substantially harm Taylor Swift fans."
—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 15, 2022
Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, said that the Eras Tour debacle "ended up converting more Gen Z'ers into antimonopolists overnight than anything I could have done."
Now, the Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger, a probe that began even before the Eras Tour debacle. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on reports of an investigation.
"As we have stated many times in the past, Live Nation takes its responsibilities under the antitrust laws seriously and does not engage in behaviors that could justify antitrust litigation, let alone orders that would require it to alter fundamental business practices," Live Nation Entertainment said in a lengthy statement on competition.
Swifties coming up against high resale prices and difficulty securing tickets led to calls to reexamine the merger, which critics and musicians say has cost fans and artists.
"Because of Live Nation's market dominance, artists, venues, and consumers simply have no choice but to use the platform notwithstanding its flaws and failures," Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Amy Klobuchar, and Ed Markey wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice.
In the most extreme outcome, the investigation could lead to an unwinding of the merger.
The FTC and DOJ are keeping a close eye on mergers, and their impact on consumers and workers alike
The problem with the merger, critics say, is it's led to higher costs for music fans and leaves little opportunity for artists or venues to use a different vendor.
Currently, the FTC and DOJ have been focused on modernizing guidelines for mergers, with a particular focus on what's called "monopsony power." That's the kind of merger critics argue happened with Live Nation and Ticketmaster. It means an employer holds outsized power in the labor market, including an ability to do things like set wages across industries.
Another example is the blocked merger of publishing houses Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, in which the DOJ argued that the merger would lead to one company holding too much power over author advances.
For musicians encountering a shrinking industry with stagnant wages, that might sound familiar. Artists told Insider that touring has broadly become more financially untenable, as payment to artists stays low but costs are high — and fans are spending more money on ticket fees that they could be spending on other shows.
At the time of the proposed merger back in 2010, the Department of Justice put Live Nation under a consent decree, a legally binding agreement. The terms of the consent decree dictate that the company can't retaliate against concert venues for opting into a different ticketing service, or threaten them.
But, despite that judgment being the terms that allowed the merger to take place, "Live Nation repeatedly and over the course of several years engaged in conduct that, in the Department's view, violated the Final Judgment," according to a 2019 release from the Department of Justice. In 2019, the Department of Justice specifically prohibited Live Nation from threatening to withhold concerts for venues using a different ticket service — and specifying that Live Nation would rack up a $1,000,000 penalty for every violation. Live Nation has not incurred any of those penalties.
As part of that 2019 judgment, the DOJ's antitrust division was appointed an independent monitor "to investigate and report on Live Nation's compliance."
"We strongly disagree with the DOJ's allegations in the filing and the conclusions they seek to draw from six isolated episodes among some 5,000 ticketing deals negotiated during the life of the consent decree," Live Nation Entertainment said in a statement. "Nevertheless, in keeping with our decision to settle, our focus is now on bringing this matter to its conclusion and continuing to deliver the best live event experiences to fans everywhere."