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The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is
titled "That’s The Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting
Consumers in Live Entertainment." The committee did not disclose
the witnesses.
In November, Ticketmaster canceled a planned ticket sale to the
general public for Swift's "Eras" tour, her first in five years,
after more than 3.5 billion requests from fans, bots and
scalpers overwhelmed its website.
"The issues within America’s ticketing industry were made
painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of
thousands of fans hoping to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift’s
new tour, but these problems are not new," said Senator Amy
Klobuchar, who heads an antitrust subcommittee.
"We will examine how consolidation in the live entertainment and
ticketing industries harms customers and artists alike."
Klobuchar and two other lawmakers argued in November that
Ticketmaster and owner Live Nation Entertainment should be
broken up by the Justice Department if any misconduct is found
in an ongoing investigation.
Ticketmaster, which antitrust experts contend commands more than
70% market share of primary ticket services for major U.S.
concert venues, did not respond to a Reuters request for comment
late Tuesday.
In November, the company denied any anti-competitive practices
and noted it remained under a consent decree with the Justice
Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation, adding
that there was no "evidence of systemic violations of the
consent decree."
Consent decrees are often used to prohibit potentially
anticompetitive practices or impose other requirements as a
condition of merger approvals.
A previous Ticketmaster dispute with the Justice Department
culminated in a December 2019 settlement extending the consent
agreement into 2025.
Swift has said previously that her team had been assured by
ticket sellers that they could handle a surge in demand and that
it was "excruciating" for her to watch mistakes happen with no
recourse.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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