Ticketmaster's Bad Blood

Music fans are accusing the ticketing giant and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, of wielding disfunctional monopoly control

By Kendall Polidori

Frustrated concert-goers have formed a posse of “vigilantes” to rein in a ticketing platform they view as a malfunctioning monopoly.

They’ve dubbed their group “Vigilante Legal,” even though it’s not a law firm and doesn’t offer legal services. It’s really a gathering of “Swifties” who want to do something about the recent Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster debacle and the ticketing industry’s larger issues.

Vigilante Legal organizer Blake Barnett, who’s also a lawyer, established the crew along with other attorneys and scholars, regulators, journalists, paraprofessionals and public relations consultants.

Barnett had been one of millions of music fans who used Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan presale in November to buy tickets for Taylor Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour. After trying to cope with what they viewed as a defective ticketing system and paying “astronomical” prices and fees, the self-identified vigilantes were fed up.

Here’s how bad customers say it was: More than 3.5 million fans pre-registered for tickets. The platform sent out 1.5 million presale codes and placed 2 million people on a waiting list. On the day of the sale, an estimated 14 million people descended upon the site, where they encountered glitches, crashes and interminable waits. Bots and other users were allowed into the site even though they didn’t have the required presale codes. Then, Ticketmaster canceled the general sale, and an uproar ensued.

Don’t Blame Me

Both Live Nation and Ticketmaster released public statements regard - ing the Eras Tour sale, blaming the issues on unexpected high demand and bot attacks. Ticketmaster did not respond to Luckbox’s requests for comment.

But the day after the debacle, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Live Nation Entertainment (LYV), Ticketmaster’s parent company.

“Ticketmaster knew that Taylor Swift’s demand was going to be insane [because] she hadn’t toured since 2018,” Barnett says. “They knew how many fans were trying to get these tickets because they’re the ones who signed people up for verified fan presale—when they knew for a fact how many tickets they had available.”

Swift’s tour generated more demand for tickets than virtually any other event in history, and Barnett says the singer’s fans are not the type to keep quiet. But other fans and the artists they follow have also complained bitterly about Ticketmaster for decades.

As far back as 1994, Pearl Jam claimed Ticketmaster abused its marketplace dominance by charging high service fees and ticket prices. The band members attempted to boycott the ticketing service and subsequently found themselves playing small venues that didn’t make sense for such a prominent act.

All Too Well

By 2010, Ticketmaster was in talks to merge with Live Nation, a global American entertainment company. The deal went through and created an entity known as Live Nation Entertainment.

Among those waving a red flag and warning of monopoly at the time of the merger was David Balto, an antitrust lawyer and former policy director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition. Ticketmaster, the dominant provider of ticketing services, was joining forces with Live Nation, the largest concert promoter, he noted then.

The merger “created a corporation that has used its monopoly power to bully venues, ticketing providers, concert-goers and even musicians,” says the American Economic Liberties Project, a group that lobbies for corporate accountability laws and enforcement of antitrust regulations.

Ticketmaster abused its marketplace dominance as far back as 1994, members of Pearl Jam say.

“I have no doubt in my mind that Ticketmaster is a monopoly,” Barnett agrees. “The merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster should have never gone through. They own everything. There’s no option when it comes to touring, at least for artists as big as Taylor Swift, Harry Styles or Bad Bunny.”

These days, Ticketmaster controls more than 70% of the market for ticketing and live events and more than 80% for live concerts, according to a Yale University study.

Average ticket prices on Ticketmaster have more than tripled since the mid-’90s, and fees shared among venues, promoters, artists and Ticketmaster for each ticket can run as high as 78% of the total ticket price.

If you’ve bought tickets to a live event, it was likely through Ticketmaster. The platform usually operates reliably and is easy enough to navigate. Some say it has changed the way ticketing works in the digital age.

But for artists with a mass following, such as Taylor Swift, the platform’s ability to handle high demand remains questionable. Throw in dynamic pricing, a secondary ticketing market, high service fees and an anticompetitive nature—and the platform doesn’t look so great anymore.

The control doesn’t end there, either. Large stadiums across the country are under contract with Ticketmaster, meaning ticket sales for those shows must go through the platform. Some 70%-80% of major U.S. venues have exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster, notes The Hustle, an online business and tech newsletter.

“That’s really what a monopoly is,” Barnett says of the arrangement with giant venues and control of pricing. “It means there is no competition in the marketplace that artists can go to instead.”

Vigilante Shit

The ticketing situation has fueled enough anger to inspire the villagers to take up pitchforks and torches in a campaign to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

So far, it appears leaders are listening. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) say the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on antitrust plans to investigate the lack of competition in ticketing. The Senate held a hearing on Jan. 24 on the ticketing industry following the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster debacle. At press time, the hearing was set to stay open until Jan. 31.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation to determine whether Live Nation Entertainment has abused its power in the music industry, according to The New York Times.

At the same time, groups of Swifties are alleging in lawsuits that Ticketmaster employs anticompetitive practices to impose higher prices in the presale, sale and resale markets. About 350 plaintiffs are parties to a suit filed in November, says attorney Jennifer Anne Kinder.

Some 71% of poll respondents are concerned about the cost of tickets online, 79% support the Justice Department’s investigation into Live Nation Entertainment and 68% favor breaking up Ticketmaster and Live Nation, according to research by Data for Progress.

“The [Eras Tour] experience was unusually horrible,” Kinder observes. “There were some pretty significant antitrust violations going on with this particular sale. And another angle was to look at it as fraud and misrepresentation just based on how the sale was set up for the verified fan with the codes and how horribly wrong it all went.”

The plaintiffs cite the Eras Tour specifically, but Kinder says her firm has received phone calls related to other ticket sales. “There’s definitely a systemic problem going on here,” Kinder maintains.

Presale tickets to see rockers Blink-182 went on sale through Ticketmaster in October, and fans saw their tickets pulled from their online checkout carts as prices were soaring to more than $600 each. Founding member and bassist Mark Hoppus couldn’t secure tickets to his own show.

While Vigilante Legal isn’t suing Ticketmaster, Barnett’s own firm isn’t opposed to the idea, she says. For now, Vigilante Legal lawyers are compiling a brief listing action the government can take against Ticketmaster and providing evidence.

Youth organization Voters of Tomorrow has begun an initiative titled S.W.I.F.T., which stands for Swifties Working to Increase Fairness from Ticketmaster. It’s working to teach young people about antitrust laws and was started in response to the Eras Tour ticket debacle. But it’s taking a broader approach to involve young people and encourage action by the DOJ.

“That was a moment we were able to capitalize on, but we’ve been wanting to do some sort of antitrust project for a while,” says Marianna Pecora, deputy communications director for digital engagement at Voters of Tomorrow. “Antitrust isn’t exactly something that gets young people too excited. It’s not a very flashy topic.”

That’s why the organization is capitalizing on the moment when the Swift ticket problems occurred, she continues. “Young people are caring about antitrust for the first time,” she says, “because it is directly affecting them.”

It’s all part of what seems like a movement to hold Ticketmaster accountable for fans’ grievances.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVORABLE OR UNFAVORABLE OPINION OF TICKETMASTER?

10% Favorable

32% Neutral

58% Unfavorable

—Luckbox Reader Survey

Long story short

In a lawsuit filed by DB Hill Law, attorneys explained the Taylor Swift problem this way: “Ticketmaster did not have enough seats to meet the demand this number of codes would require. Ticketmaster intentionally provided codes when it could not satisfy ticket demand.”

Ticketmaster and Live Nation also rob artists of the right to maintain their set ticket prices, Kinder maintains. For the Eras Tour, Swift is said to have set prices from $49-$499, but fans wound up paying much more. Swift also tried to hold down prices by opting out of dynamic pricing, which raises prices as demand increases, but she had no way of avoiding vertical pricing, which refers to reselling tickets.

“People got through the queue, and the tickets were not the price that Taylor Swift negotiated for the tickets—instead they went for $800 and more,” Kinder says. “What we believe is that they were already being resold— that the bots and their resellers had already had their computer program configured to beat fans in buying the tickets.”

The originally priced tickets were probably resold within 20 minutes of the beginning of the sale, she says. In one example, a woman who tried to check out 41 times was charged $14,000 and never obtained a ticket.

“I suspect that Ticketmaster realized about an hour in that they were in a lot of trouble,” Kinder says.

Because tickets were selling so fast and being resold almost immediately, Ticketmaster began seating customers in spots with obstructed views or in areas reserved for customers with disabilities, sources say.

So it goes ...

The time has come for legislators and the judicial system to deal with Ticketmaster, Barnett says. It’s tough to predict what will come of the investigations and lawsuits underway, but the company should take allegations of breaking antitrust laws seriously, she says.

“These are laws that companies violate all the time, and people get away with it because many people don’t understand the laws and spread false information,” Barnett says. “The hope is to educate the population so when it happens next time, maybe something different will happen.”

Barnett doesn’t anticipate a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster but hopes public outrage will spark change. Ticketmaster dominates the ticketing market, but competitors like SeatGeek and AXS are also accused of charging high service fees.

“Keep the pressure on the government,” Barnett declares. “Yes, there are attorneys general and the DOJ who are investigating, but no one seems to really care about that anymore. Ticketmaster has done a pretty good job in the last few weeks of trying to convince the public that they’re not bad.”

The suit by DB Hill Law had not had its first hearing when Luckbox went to press. The next step is for the defendant, Ticketmaster, to file a response to the complaint.

Perhaps the citizenry will take an interest in the litigation. Some 71% of poll respondents are concerned about the cost of tickets online, 79% support the Justice Department’s investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, and 68% favor breaking up Ticketmaster and Live Nation, according to research by Data for Progress.

“We’re going to continue to beat the drum loud enough and never stop,” Kinder says. “We may lose everything we do. But that’s not going to stop us from protesting, from participating and from being on social media because somebody needs to answer for what happened [to Swifties] that day.”

TAKING STOCK IN MUSIC

Ticketmaster, an American ticket sales and distribution company, merged with Live Nation in 2010 to create Live Nation Entertainment (LYV).

Live Nation’s stock declined 43% last year, underperforming the S&P 500’s loss of 19%.

At press time, Live Nation’s stock price hovered around 73, but some analysts saw upside potential this quarter because 2022 revenue, as of Q3, grew to $6 billion.

Demand for tickets is outpacing the pre-COVID-19 levels of 2019. But prices are declining because fans are concerned about inflation, recession and the Federal Reserve’s repeated hikes in interest rates. They’re not falling because of recent issues with Ticketmaster.

What’s more, Live Nation has a history of stock price bouncebacks, Forbes magazine notes.

“Out of 33 instances in the last 10 years that LYV stock saw a 21-day decline of 16% or more, 19 of them resulted in LYV stock rising over the subsequent one-month period of 21 trading days,” the magazine says.

That trend suggests a nearterm positive upturn for the company.

Ticketmaster Timeline

1994 - Pearl Jam attempts to boycott Ticketmaster over high ticket prices and service fees.

2007 - Live Nation, Ticketmaster's largest customer, begins to build its own ticketing service.

2010 - Live Nation and Ticketmaster merge to form Live Nation Entertainment.

2011 - Ticketmaster begins basing ticket prices on consumer demand.

2019 - The Department of Justice declines to act against Live Nation for allegedly forcing venues to accept Ticketmaster services.

April 2021 - House democrats call on the Biden administration to revisit the Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger.

July 2021 - President Biden signs a broad executive order aimed at fostering competition in the American economy.

October 2022 - Dynamic pricing and resold tickets push the price of some Blink-182 tickets to more than $1,000.

November 2022 - High demand for Taylor Swift tickets crashes Ticketmaster’s site, inflates ticket prices and forces a halt to sales.

November 2022 - The Justice Department begins investigating Live Nation Entertainment, owner of Ticketmaster.

December 2022 - Hundreds of fans are denied entry to a Bad Bunny show in Mexico when Ticketmaster Mexico allegedly sells invalid tickets.