Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation had a calamitous 2022 – managing to anger everyone from Taylor Swiftand Bad Bunny to Joe Biden and Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. As calls grow for action to rein in the concert monopoly in the US and abroad, the company seems to have hit on a new strategy: spending big in Washington.

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Consumer advocates, a growing number of lawmakers and attorneys general say the problems stem from Live Nation’s stranglehold on live entertainment, which has eliminated meaningful competition and, they claim, harmed artists and consumers. Since merging with Ticketmaster in 2010, Live Nation has controlled most of the US’s ticketing, and is among the largest promoters, venue owners and artist managers. When it doesn’t control one of those elements, it uses its leverage to force companies to work with it, critics say.

“The approval of the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger led to a marketplace and concert space where there is a complete inability to go up against this company,” said Krista Brown, senior policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project, which is helping lead a campaign to reverse the merger.

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“Ticketmaster and Live Nation have come out on top every single time – even when the consent decree was reviewed and it was established by the DoJ that Live Nation violated it, very little changed,” Brown said. “Their control of the regulatory environment, whether overt or covert, seems quite strong.”

Live Nation’s lobbying records from the current election total $1.7m. The increase came after the introduction of the Boss Act, though vague reporting requirements make it impossible for the public to know how much of that sum was spent specifically on the act.

The Boss Act was named after Bruce Springsteen’s nickname and drawn up following a 2009 controversy in which fans were prevented by Ticketmaster from buying tickets to Springsteen’s tour. If passed, it would increase transparency around ticket sales and impose some new restrictions on secondary market sales.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced in October that it intended to develop new rules around “junk fees” and charges imposed on “captive” customers across the economy.

The rules aim to address “the black box nature of the fees”, Brown said. That would probably have implications for the entertainment industry and Live Nation, which imposes facility, convenience and processing fees that consumers must pay because Ticketmaster is the only company selling tickets to an event.

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