www.ticketnews.com: In an email sent to Pollstar, Live Nation dismissed last week’s call by a pair of senators for a hard look at the company by the Department of Justice (DOJ), accusing competitors of using misinformation related to their business practices and insisting that the DOJ has already been monitoring its compliance without issue. “There is no cause for further investigations or studies,” it concluded.
3 comments:
Live Nation makes a very good point here. Everyday it seems like the government is trying to force get us to give them information which is often a violation of privacy. Not that long-ago Apple had to refuse giving away information on its costumers both with regards to basic info and access into people iPhones. Live Nation, while not in regards to privacy, is now doing the same thing. They shouldn’t have to give away information that belongs to them Especially if they are under constant review by the department requesting it anyways! They have an agreement to not violate this contract and as part of the agreement they are allowing monitoring access. There is no basis for this investigation, and they should not be coerced into giving away any information that the Senators and Department of Justice have no right to or concern for. The other side to this is that its based-on Ticketmaster now being a part of the company. A merger doesn’t mean that an agreement was automatically broken.
If you don’t have anything worth hiding, why are you insisting against an investigation? This isn’t about privacy or “giving away” information, this is about making sure someone isn’t using bully tactics in order to remain on top in a competitive market. If Live Nation is so sure it has nothing to hide, than two senators going “hold up, can we see if these allegations are true?” should not cause more response than “come on in, take a look around.” Monitoring in place does not mean that the DOJ or any other group affiliated with the monitoring is watching every tiny little piece that could happen. It means that they are making sure that the abuses that they know about happening don’t happen. That does not mean there are not other abuses that they could be missing. Asking to step up that monitoring into a temporary and more in depth investigation to make sure that smaller competitors are given the room to co-exist and compete fairly is not some grand or great overstep of the government.
I’m surprised that the two Senate would call for an investigation, when the Department of Justice is already involved. However, I think that Live Nation’s stance on why people have been choosing Ticketmaster over other ticketing platforms is interesting. Ticketmaster can give better service because they have more money. Part of why they have more money is because of the partnership Live Nation. More money allows for more people and resources when solving customer problems and TicketMaster has an existing infrastructure for venues that has been tested by the other venues before them. Though this is not a bed thing or unfair business practices, it is due to their companies partnership. Even though Live Nation has done nothing wrong, they are benefiting from the merger. I had not read the New York Times article, but I’m curious what it said and how LiveNation attributes that to the culture of the ticketing industry.
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