US sues Ticketmaster owner Live Nation and seeks ‘break up’ of alleged monopoly

The US Department of Justice has sued the owner of Ticketmaster, Live Nation, seeking a break-up of the concert promotion and ticketing giant.

“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” said Merrick Garland, the US attorney general. “Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators.”

Wednesday’s lawsuit, filed in the southern district of New York , follows of years of scrutiny of Live Nation’s domination of global ticket sales. Attorneys general from 29 states and Washington DC joined the lawsuit.

The company, which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010, faced a torrent of criticism in the wake of the botched sale of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in 2022. As fury over the debacle mounted, officials are said to have started an antitrust investigation.

Live Nation has used a monopoly to suppress competition, the justice department and a string of states alleged in a court filing.

Lawmakers have accused the company of sky-high fees, poor customer service and anticompetitive practices.

Allegations in the lawsuit include that Live Nation has worked with a venue management firm to steer clients into signing exclusive agreements with Ticketmaster, that it has threatened retaliation and acquire start-ups to stop competition, that it signs long-term exclusive agreements with venues that prevent them from using any potential competitors and that Ticketmaster became the default ticketing platform for several entertainment artists because LiveNation controls a large share of the venues where they perform.

But Live Nation has repeatedly pushed back against claims that it is effectively a monopoly, arguing that it has “very little to do” with high ticket prices.

After the 2022 mishandling of Swift ticket sales, Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, told the Wall Street Journal that the fiasco “converted more Gen Z’ers into antimonopolists overnight than anything I could have done”. When “firms become dominant, they become too big to care”, she claimed.