Live Nation and Ticketmaster lawsuit: Whatever happens won’t cut concert prices

The US Department of Justice has a thing for Live Nation's "monopolistic practices." The thing is, anything the DOJ does won't make a difference to music fans.

Selling a concert ticket should be easy. At its essence, a ticket is a contract between you and a promoter that allows you access to a specific venue at a stated date and time to see a performance. In other words, it’s a thing you buy to get you in the door. Yet selling and buying concert tickets is one of the most opaque consumer experiences in the known universe.

Misinformation, frustration, and ignorance about how the system works — and needs to work — have created a situation where fans and governments are fed up and want something done about it. Good luck with that.

The latest salvo is an antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster, accusing the company of being mean, monopolistic and using illegal tactics to stifle competition. (Live Nation’s response to the lawsuit can be found on livenationentertainment.com.)

At the heart of the lawsuit are four main things:

Live Nation is certainly very, very big, thanks to the 2010 merger with Ticketmaster, something that was approved by the US Government. Last year alone, the company promoted 50,059 shows globally, a new record. Ticketmaster sells about 500 million tickets a year, and about 70 per cent of all tickets sold to major concert venues are processed through Ticketmaster, according to data in a federal lawsuit filed by consumers in 2022.

And yes, the price of tickets has skyrocketed in recent years. And there’s no question the added fees and service charges are annoying. But breaking up Live Nation isn’t going to change any of that.

Before you call me a Live Nation/Ticketmaster apologist, let’s look at some cold, hard, irrefutable facts about concert tickets. You may not like what you’re about to read, but this is the real-world situation.

First, when setting the price of a concert ticket, the buck always stops with the artist. An artist’s manager and agent will approach Live Nation (or any promoter for that matter) and say, “We want to go on tour. Our costs are projected to be X and we’d like to make a profit of Y. How many tickets do we need to sell at what price in how many cities to make that happen?”