Live Nation Class Action Lawsuit Filed After Justice Dept. Sues Over Event Promotion, Ticket-Selling 'Monopoly'

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Live Nation Entertainment faces a new class action lawsuit after the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and attorneys general from 29 states and Washington D.C. sued the Ticketmaster parent company, calling for the break up of an apparent monopoly that the government alleges has an illegal stranglehold over the live events industry.

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The 43-page Live Nation class action lawsuit says the world’s largest concert and event promoter and Ticketmaster have over the last 30 years “built empires” across the live event and ticket-selling industries through anticompetitive means. After Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, the companies formed a juggernaut with near-total control over concert promotion for major venues and primary and secondary ticketing services for major concert venues, all while leveraging their monopoly against small competitors in each market, the complaint alleges.

After an antitrust investigation that began in January 2023, the Justice Department sued Live Nation on May 23, 2024 in an attempt to break up the company, alleging consumers have ultimately paid the price for the much-maligned promoter’s alleged violations of federal antitrust laws in the events industry. In its lawsuit, the DOJ accused Live Nation of harming the entire live entertainment industry, leaving fans to pay more in fees, artists with fewer opportunities to perform concerts, and smaller promoters with no chance to enter the industry. 

According to the proposed antitrust class action, Live Nation handles events promotion for “at least 80 of the top 100 largest concert and event venues” nationwide, and its share of the promotion for major concert venues exceeds 60 percent. To protect this dominance, the suit says, Live Nation often requires venues it contracts with to sign exclusivity agreements that “entrench” the defendant as the venue’s sole concert and event promoting agent.

In addition, Live Nation controls hundreds of venues through “leaseholds, ownership, or equity interests,” the case adds.

“This means that, to access the majority of significant concert and event tours in the United States, a consumer must interact, directly or indirectly, with Live Nation,” the class action summarizes, noting that Live Nation also mandates that the venues for which it acts as promoter use Ticketmaster as the sole agency for primary ticketing services for all Live Nation-promoted concerts and events.

Per the complaint, this “tying” arrangement set by Live Nation erases significant competition, “as it boxes all other primary ticketing agents out from servicing any concerts or events where Live Nation is the promoter, i.e., most major concerts and events in the United States.” Further, Live Nation’s tying of its promotion services to Ticketmaster’s ticket-selling services substantially boosts the companies’ profits given that both collect upstream revenue from event promotion and downstream revenue from ticket sales, the lawsuit shares.

With regard to Ticketmaster, the case says the company controls as much as 80 percent of all primary ticket sales for major concert venues in the U.S., a stranglehold “reinforced” by Live Nation’s grip on the market for concert promotion at the same major venues.

“Thus, on the primary ticket market, Ticketmaster acts as the sole ticket broker between the venue and the end consumer. Ticketmaster, because of this exclusivity, is able to charge supracompetitive fees for each ticket sold through its platform. Additionally, the face-value of each ticket sold in the primary market is supracompetitively priced. This is because Live Nation and Ticketmaster work in tandem to eliminate competition in the primary ticketing market.”

Because Live Nation requires Ticketmaster to be the sole primary ticketing agent for any venues it works with, competitors such as SeatGeek and StubHub are blocked from competing in the market, the filing alleges. With no threat of downward pricing pressure from competitors, Ticketmaster’s margins are as high as 80 percent on each ticket it sells, the suit claims.

With Ticketmaster subsidizing ticket-selling profits, Live Nation is able to maintain its stranglehold on the concert promotion market by charging predatory prices for its promotion services, and this predatory pricing allows the company to keep competition out of the promotion market, the case says.

“Accordingly, despite Live Nation’s promotion business losing tens of millions of dollars in some years due to its predatory pricing, its promotion business is able to stay afloat by functioning as a loss leader that helps maintain the market dominance of Live Nation’s subsidiary and affiliate, Ticketmaster,” the lawsuit relays. 

Similarly, the lawsuit alleges that Ticketmaster uses “anticompetitive technological restraints” to suppress competition on the secondary market for ticket sales by making it difficult to resell tickets initially purchased on Ticketmaster on any other platform.

“In short, Ticketmaster’s primary market platform works in tandem with its secondary market platform to distort, corrupt and restrain competition in the Relevant Market,” the complaint reads, claiming the result is “devastating” for secondary ticket buyers, who end up paying inflated prices for resold tickets.

The Live Nation class action lawsuit looks to cover all end-user purchasers in the U.S. who bought secondary tickets on a secondary ticket exchange from a secondary seller who, in turn, bought a primary ticket or a secondary ticket for an event at a major concert venue in the U.S. from Ticketmaster or one of its affiliated entities owned, directly or indirectly, by Live Nation at any point since the 2010 merger.

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