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Taylor Swift may well be spearheading a revolution in the concert ticketing world.
Earlier this week, Swift put tickets on sale for her highly anticipated new tour only to find Ticketmaster drop the ball and strand many furious Swifties.
Big names in music such as Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Rage Against The Machine, Garth Brooks and others have long cast a critical eye on the company after fans have voiced frustrations with the ticket-buying process. Earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired off a blunt tweet: “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s (sic) merger with LiveNation should never have been approved”; Sen. Amy Kloubuchar expressed similar concerns, and the Tennessee Attorney General vowed to launch an anti-trust probe in response to consumer complaints.
The Department of Justice is reportedly intensifying its investigation into Ticketmaster, the ticketing giant that controls entry into a vast major of the nation’s live events, and its parent company Live Nation, which merged in 2010 to form a management and ticketing juggernaut that critics have argued is a monopoly that does a disservice to fans, artists and venue owners alike.
The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster, according to a report in The New York Times Friday. The company is owned by Live Nation, which focused on managing talent. USA TODAY has reached out to Live Nation and the DOJ for comment.
According to the report, Justice Department lawyers have been in touch with both ticket-selling competitors and venues to inquire about Live Nation’s overall practices. When the Ticketmaster merger with Live Nation was approved in 2010, Justice Department officials stipulated that Live Nation could not leverage its power to threaten venues to use Ticketmaster for ticket sales. But in 2019, a department investigation found that the company had violated that agreement. New parameters were enforced.
Swift is not managed by Live Nation; her tours are promoted by the Messina Touring Group.
Following a dayslong presale ticket frenzy, which saw major delays, errors and pauses in the queues to purchase tickets, Ticketmaster ultimately canceled a scheduled Friday general sale due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory.
