Washington, D.C. — At an Economic Liberties event today, the #BreakUpTicketmaster Coalition, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and a group of academics and advocates, renewed emphatic calls on the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division to restore competition to the live events and break Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s power over the industry.

“This situation is just another example of why we need to update our antitrust laws to make it easier for enforcers to crack down on anti-competitive behavior and look at past deals like the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) in her opening remarks. “When they have this big a monopoly and don’t have competition, that is not the American way and it has all kinds of repercussions…First, we need to support the DOJ and its enforcement of the consent decree over Live Nation and the reported investigation into whether Live Nation broke anti-monopoly laws.”

The event featured established academics and antitrust lawyers, who were aligned that the simplest and cleanest approach to restoring competition to live events is for the DOJ to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster. 

“It’s not enough for Live Nation to just be divested of Ticketmaster,” said Katherine Van Dyck, Senior Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “They need to be foreclosed from entering the ticket market independently, which would completely defeat the purpose of the breakup in the first instance.”

“When behavioral remedies don’t work, we need structural remedies,” said Kathleen Bradish, Acting President at the American Antitrust Institute. “And we can’t have anything less than a breakup of the company.”

“The company has its tentacles in each aspect of the process and they use it in combination, not for any pro-competitive efficiencies, but rather to harm rivals at every step of the process,” said Michael Carrier, a professor at Rutgers University School of Law. “We’ve gone down the consent decree road, it’s failed. it’s time to do something different.”

“It’s been the name of our coalition all along: Break Up Ticketmaster,” said Morgan Harper, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project. “The time is now and we continue to encourage the Department of Justice to take that step.”

The event also heard from professionals in the live events industry and consumer advocates who reiterated how Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopoly power has wreaked havoc on the industry.  

“Most venues can’t afford to not co-promote with Live Nation—whether or not they’re Live Nation venues—because they need the talent that Live Nation has,” said David Combs, an independent concert promoter and booker, and Founder of Rediscover Fire. “You just don’t really have as much of a choice to not work with Live Nation.”

“Since the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger was consecrated in 2010,  our worst fears about what would happen in the music industry have proven true,” said John Breyault, Vice President at National Consumers League. “The company has continually expanded its monopoly taking over more promoters of opening and buying more venues and making the experience worse for consumers.”

“In competition policy, music creators and fans are closely aligned,” said Kevin Erickson, Director of the Future of Music Coalition. “We might be on the opposite side of the transaction but we both benefit from a marketplace environment where different partners are competing to best serve artist and audience needs.”

“The harms you see in the fan experience: restrictions on ticket transfer, deceptive ticket allocations, junk fees, bots–to an extent–and everything else stems from the root cause, that is this monopoly,” said Brian Hess, Executive Director of the Sports Fans Coalition.

Four years ago, Economic Liberties released a comprehensive document called Courage to Learn, identifying mergers approved or settled during the Obama administration that accelerated our country’s monopoly problem. In that paper, Live Nation-Ticketmaster was one of the mergers we thought that the DOJ should have handled differently. In 2022, Economic Liberties took note of fans organically complaining about the poor service they received from Ticketmaster. We moved quickly to organize this discontent into the Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition. In October 2022,  Economic Liberties and a broad coalition of allies launched #BreakUpTicketmaster, a campaign to urge the Department of Justice to investigate and unwind the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger of 2010. The Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition has since organized over 100K concerned fans, artists, and independent venue owners that want to break Ticketmaster’s power over live events ticketing, artist promotion, and venue ownership.

Rewatch “Swifties Revenge: The Case for Breaking Up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”

For more info on Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopoly power, read “The Depth of Live Nation’s Dominance.”

Read “The Case Against Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.