www.ticketnews.com: The Department of Justice detailed six instances where Live Nation violated a 2010 consent decree by using threats to ensure venue clients used Ticketmaster in court filings made public last week. Such threats, which Live Nation has long denied, were the reason for the DOJ’s plans to bring court proceedings against the entertainment giant, which were halted by the company’s quick settlement clarifying and extending the consent decree by five years to 2025.
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I am glad that there are some laws in place at all to help keep monopolies like the one Ticketmaster has in check. I honestly did not know about these kinds of laws. It definitely seems as if Live Nation is getting off lightly, though. Three million probably is not that much for them, and the DOJ brought several explicit violations against them. It does not make sense that Live Nation was able to claim they did nothing wrong and just settle. Settling usually at least indicates some recognition of wrongdoing. What Live Nation is doing is showing that they do not fear the charges many of their venues brought against them. The venues cannot present concerts unless they partner with Ticketmaster, which is costly. As a result, no other ticketing companies can get in the door. These venues and alternative ticketing sites will continue to suffer until something more is done. Hopefully if they continue doing this, they will not be able to buy themselves out of it again.
Although Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster was technically not a monopoly-inducing merger (in the sense that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are in different sectors of the concert market), their merger created the beginning of the end of competitive pricing in the live entertainment world. Live Nation would insinuate that it could give venues a very hard time if they didn’t agree to use Ticketmaster for their concerts. Instead of creating a monopoly over, say, the entertainment promoting sector, the Live Nation/ Ticketmaster merger created an effective monopoly over the live entertainment sector as a whole. 10 years later, the monopoly persists despite government attempts to limit its negotiation/quid pro quo power. The $3 million fine will barely register for a company that reported revenue of over $10 billion in 2017. Also, there were no actual structural changes made to the company, so there is no provision in place for preventing Live Nation from going back to their “old” ways.
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