„Es ist Zeit, Schluss zu machen“: Einblick in die Blockbuster-Klage des DOJ gegen Live Nation

> The DOJ filed its lawsuit against Live Nation in May, alongside 30 attorneys general from red and blue states, accusing the company of operating as a monopoly. (Ten more states joined in August.) Kanter’s antitrust division has taken on giants like Apple and Google — winning a landmark case against the latter over its internet-search dominance — but he says nothing they’ve done has elicited a reaction among consumers and lawmakers alike quite like this.

> Statistically speaking, the average ticket price for the world’s 10 highest-grossing concerts has risen 26 percent over the past five years, according to research from the trade publication Pollstar. (A ticket to see Drake in 2023, for example, cost $260 on average, up from $116 in 2018.) Combined with the insult of dynamic pricing — the business tactic that can hike the ticket price hundreds of dollars based on demand — and the sense that much of your money is going to surcharges and hidden fees, the rising costs have driven fans mad. (Fees added, on average, another 27 percent to a purchase, according to a 2018 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.) Those who get shut out during the official sale and turn to the secondary ticket market fare no better. Today’s scalpers use bots to game the system and charge double the face value, or more.

> Not all of these problems are attributable to Live Nation and Ticketmaster, of course. The concert giant has joined indie promoters in calling for lawmakers to more stringently regulate the resale market, and much of the live-music industry supports measures requiring ticket sellers to list fees upfront rather than hide them. The company will also be all too happy to tell you that artists are the ones who set ticket prices. But there’s still a sense that this arm of the music industry is utterly dysfunctional — and that the DOJ’s case could be one big step toward fixing it.

> Despite the fact that the DOJ itself approved that merger nearly 15 years ago (with some strings), it now views it as detrimental to the industry. “We are not here today because Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s conduct is inconvenient or frustrating,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference in May. “We are here because … that conduct is anticompetitive and illegal. We allege that Live Nation has illegally monopolized markets across the live-concert industry in the United States for far too long. It is time to break it up.”