It’s a testament to the degree that basically everybody in American hates event promoter/venue operator/ticket seller Live Nation that it’s one of the few things that even Joe Biden and Donald Trump seem to have basically agreed on. Biden’s Justice Department spent a couple of years trying to pry Live Nation apart from Ticketmaster, on the grounds that the merger of the two companies might, possibly, violate some of the country’s antitrust laws, what with each of them controlling huge swathes of the live entertainment industry. Members of Trump’s inner circle—notably J.D. Vance—have given off signals that they approved of the move, although Trump himself has yet to give clear directives to his own DOJ about pursuing the antitrust case further.
Now the U.S. Senate is getting involved, and, seriously, we have to ask: Do you realize how much shit you have to suck to generate a genuine bipartisan movement from our current Congress? (Live Nation: Healing America’s wounds one convenience fee at a time.) In a letter signed by Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Mike Lee, the two senators wrote that, “Given Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s long history of anticompetitive conduct, we urge you to look into this deal to determine if any antitrust laws were broken and whether consumers were illegally denied the benefits of new competition in this market.” That letter lined up with a similar one sent this week by the American Economic Liberties Project and the Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition, which wrote that “Through predatory business practices and exclusionary conduct, Live Nation-Ticketmaster has not only reinforced its stranglehold over ticketing, but has also systematically eliminated potential competitors, including rival concert promoters and fan-friendly ticketing services, to insert itself throughout the ecosystem, exacerbating an already untenable situation.”
The DOJ’s antitrust division has been looking into Live Nation and Ticketmaster for more than two years now, even before public furor got even louder after the company tanked the last flaming shreds of its reputation by botching its handling of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. The company is accused of pulling myriad shady tactics related to its massive control over the ticketing and event apparatus in America, bullying rivals and raising prices with no real recourse from the market. (Live Nation claims this is all scalpers’ fault, by the way.) No word yet on which way the DOJ will end up swinging—our instincts tell us “Whichever way will suck the most”—but maybe some things are so crappy that even a broken White House can be right about them every once in a while.
[via THR]
