The head of ticketing platform SeatGeek called for the breakup of Ticketmaster and Live Nation in a congressional hearing on Tuesday, joining bipartisan senators and antitrust lawyers who called the merged companies a monopoly that uses threats to dominate the industry and harm consumers.
“The only effective remedy now is structural: dissolving the joint ownership of Ticketmaster and Live Nation,” SeatGeek CEO Jack Groetzinger told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “To improve our industry, we must restore competition.”
The senators requested the commission’s hearing after last year’s disappointing sales for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour,” which saw consumers face website outages and long wait times in a futile search for tickets.
Ticketmaster, which sells tickets, and Live Nation, which promotes concerts, merged in 2010 with the approval of then-President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, which Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and other Republicans secured to take notes during the hearing.
Since then, the combined company — called Live Nation Entertainment — has been routinely accused of threatening venues that don’t use Ticketmaster with losing Live Nation-promoted concerts.
“When I talk to people who own or operate venues, their biggest fear is that when they leave Ticketmaster, they’re going to lose content,” said Jerry Mickelson, CEO of Jam Productions, a music promoter in Chicago. “Whether people say it or not, it means if I don’t use Ticketmaster, I won’t get as many shows as I want.”
The company has also been accused of charging exorbitant fees, which can be 25 percent or more of the cost of a ticket, and of failing to adequately manage demand for popular events like Swift’s concerts.
Joe Berchtold, chief financial officer of Live Nation Entertainment, defended his company at the hearing, insisting it does not threaten venues and arguing the industry has enough competition from SeatGeek and others.
It apologized for mishandling Swift ticket sales, blaming the snafu on technical glitches.
“We were hit with three times more bot traffic than we’ve ever experienced,” Berchtold said. “This has resulted in a terrible experience for consumers, which we deeply regret. We apologize to the fans. We apologize to Ms. Swift. We have to do better and we will.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sarcastically praised Berchtold for an “extraordinary accomplishment.”
“You brought Republicans and Democrats together in an absolutely unified cause,” said Blumenthal, who also referenced some of Swift’s lyrics. “Ticketmaster should look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m the problem.’ Are.'”
Although the fiasco surrounding her tour prompted the hearing, the singer did not testify. And many senators looked beyond Ticketmaster’s failings in that incident to focus on broader anticompetitive practices in the industry.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who chairs the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, used a Swift reference of hers to argue that the Justice Department should look into breaking up Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
“To have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition. You can’t have too much consolidation,” Klobuchar said. “Something that, unfortunately for our country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know all too well.”
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