The US Division of Justice has sued Ticketmaster and its mother or father firm, Stay Nation Leisure, for abusing their alleged monopoly within the ticketing market to trample rivals.
Filed on Thursday within the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit focuses on Ticketmaster’s long-term exclusivity contracts with most of the largest music venues, making it the predominant ticketing service obtainable to concertgoers. The agency secures these offers partly by “threatening and retaliating in opposition to venues that work with rivals,” the DOJ alleges.
Within the criticism, the DOJ accuses Ticketmaster and Stay Nation, which acts as a promoter for hundreds of high-profile artists, of exploiting their relationship to determine a “self-reinforcing flywheel” that blocks rivals from gaining a foothold. Stay Nation parlays its unique promotion offers into unique ticketing offers with venues, the DOJ claims, that are left with no sensible selection however to go along with Ticketmaster, for worry of shedding entry to sought-after acts represented by its mother or father firm. The DOJ is in search of to interrupt up the joint group.
We allege that Stay Nation depends on illegal, anticompetitive conduct to train its monopolistic management over the stay occasions business in america at the price of followers, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” says lawyer common Merrick Garland in an announcement. “The result’s that followers pay extra in charges, artists have fewer alternatives to play live shows, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer actual selections for ticketing providers. It’s time to break up Stay Nation-Ticketmaster.”
Stay Nation declined to remark.
The fees introduced by the DOJ mirror allegations made beforehand in opposition to Ticketmaster in two ongoing non-public lawsuits.
In December 2022, Ticketmaster was sued by hundreds of Taylor Swift fans, who introduced a case in response to a high-profile ticketing debacle that reportedly left them queuing for hours to pay for tickets that they’d been assigned beneath an early entry program, with many in the end unable to say their allocations. The incident led to a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee on consolidation within the ticketing business and, reportedly, helped catalyze the investigation into Ticketmaster by the DOJ.
Of their lawsuit, the Swift followers accused Ticketmaster of abusing its dominant place to impose “larger costs within the presale, sale and resale marketplace for live performance tickets.” The corporate has “effectuated this anticompetitive scheme by forcing followers of musicians to make use of Ticketmaster solely to purchase live performance tickets,” the lawsuit alleged.
Within the second case, a category motion introduced in 2022 on behalf of Ticketmaster prospects within the US, Stay Nation and Ticketmaster are accused of abusing the complementary relationship between their providers to overcharge customers and maintain their monopoly. “Stay Nation controls the overwhelming majority of the large nationwide touring acts and, both explicitly or implicitly, coerces live performance venues into deciding on Ticketmaster as their ticketing service supplier on ache of shedding high-value acts,” claims Adam Wolfson, a companion at Quinn Emanuel, the legislation agency representing the plaintiffs.
