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In
a letter to the U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, senators
Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts said that "an
investigation alone does nothing for the stakeholders already
harmed by Live Nation’s market dominance and seemingly ongoing
anticompetitive behavior."
If the company, which controls an estimated 60% of the market
for promotion of major concerts and events "has continued to
abuse its dominant market position" despite two previous DOJ
actions, "we urge the Department to consider unwinding the
Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger and breaking up the company,"
they wrote.
"This may be the only way to truly protect consumers, artists,
and venue operators and to restore competition in the ticketing
market."
Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010 after a DOJ-brokered
settlement that officials said would encourage competition and
send ticket prices down. Instead, "across all genres and venues,
Ticketmaster prices have more than tripled in the past 20
years," the senators wrote.
Tickets for Swift's U.S. 'Eras' concert tour, which went on sale
last week, were hard to get amid website outages, poor customer
service and long wait times, and are selling for thousands of
dollars on resale sites.
The DOJ has proven in recent years much more willing to file
antitrust lawsuits against giant companies - including the
ongoing December 2020 lawsuit against Google - and fight
mergers.
(Reporting by Heather Timmons; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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