The U.S. Justice Department has reportedly opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s parent company — a probe that predates the recent Taylor Swift ticket sales debacle.
The Justice Department’s antitrust division has been looking into the ticket sales platform’s practices and whether its owner Live Nation Entertainment has a monopoly over the industry, according to a New York Times report Friday citing sources familiar with the matter.
The news came after a chaotic presale ticket phase for Swift’s upcoming concert tour, “The Eras Tour,” led to massive technical difficulties, the outrage of lawmakers, the cancellation of general public sales — and an angry statement from the Grammy-winning superstar, who wrote on Instagram that “it’s excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”
DOJ investigators had been looking into whether LiveNation is abusing the power it has over the lucrative ticket sales and live music industry even before the Swift ordeal, the Times said.
On Tuesday, Ticketmaster faced backlash over widespread reports of crashes, outages and long wait times in the presale for the “Look What You Made Me Do” singer’s concert series. Ticketmaster issued a sort-of-apology blaming the Swift fiasco on the “historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up to buy tickets.”
Later that day, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., took to social media to chide Ticketmaster. “Swift’s tour sale is a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near-monopoly,” he wrote, referring to the $2.5 billion merger deal that the two entertainment giants struck in early 2009.
“I’ve long urged DOJ to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry. Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior,” Blumenthal added.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., shared a similar statement on Wednesday.
“Monopolies wreak havoc on consumers and our economy,” Klobuchar tweeted. “When there is no competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the merger “should never have been approved.”
“Break them up,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
Late on Friday, Live Nation said in a statement posted on its website that it “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.”
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