Vermont is now part of a large federal antitrust lawsuit against the live entertainment industry giant Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary Ticketmaster, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark announced in a press release Monday.
The case was originally filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and 29 states, plus the District of Columbia, in May in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Clark’s office has been investigating Live Nation and Ticketmaster since then and continues to collect complaints from Vermonters, according to the release.
On Monday, Vermont joined an amended and refiled federal complaint — which argues that Live Nation and Ticketmaster “formed an illegal monopoly and engaged in anti-competitive conduct to maintain that monopoly” — along with the attorneys general of dozens of other states, bringing the total number of plaintiffs up to 40.
“Live Nation-Ticketmaster has engaged in anticompetitive conduct that has ensured its dominance in the live concert and ticketing markets — at the expense of Vermont consumers, workers, and businesses,” Clark said in the release. “Their conduct makes live music less accessible for fans, artists, and the industry that supports them, and that is a shame.”
The amended complaint calls Live Nation “the gatekeeper for the delivery of nearly all live music in America today” and “the ‘largest live entertainment company in the world,’ the ‘largest producer of live music concerts in the world,’ and ‘the world’s leading live entertainment ticketing sales and marketing company.’”
The complaint against Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster alleges that they are in violation of antitrust laws, specifically Section 2 of the Sherman Act of 1890, which prohibits any entity to “monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize” any part of a market.
Because Vermont does not have a Live Nation venue, the state needed to establish that there were Vermonters who were harmed by Ticketmaster through an investigation, Clark said in an interview on Monday. For this reason, the state will be joining the case under the alleged violation that concerns Ticketmaster’s monopolization of the ticket sales industry.
“I think everyone who has tried to buy tickets at some point in recent years has had that experience of feeling like, ‘How can this be so expensive?,’” Clark said. “And it’s not just the consumers. It’s the artists as well who are experiencing this frustration.”
According to the complaint, Live Nation directly manages more than 400 musical artists and controls around 60% of concert promotions at major concert venues across the country. Simultaneously, it owns or controls more than 265 concert venues in North America, including 60 of the top 100 amphitheaters in the U.S. Ticketmaster, meanwhile, controls 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing for concerts and an increasing percentage of the secondary market of ticket resales, the complaint stated.
This dominance allows the company to enter into “restrictive long-term, exclusive agreements” and threatens a loss of access to tours and artists managed under Live Nation if those venues sign with a rival ticketing company, the complaint alleges. It also argues that the company uses its “extensive network” of venues to force artists into selecting Live Nation as a promoter over its rivals. Its monopoly has harmed fans through higher ticketing fees, narrowing consumer choices, and stifling innovation, the lawsuit argues.
“Taken individually and considered together, Live Nation’s and Ticketmaster’s conduct allows them to exploit their conflicts of interest—as a promoter, ticketer, venue owner, and artist manager—across the live music industry and further entrench their dominant positions,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit asks the court to order Live Nation to divest itself of Ticketmaster, to prohibit the company from engaging in anticompetitive behavior and to award financial compensation to consumers who paid more than what they should have for tickets in a competitive market.
Live Nation disputes this characterization in a statement posted on its website entitled “Update: Breaking Down the DOJ Lawsuit.” The company points to rising production costs, artist popularity and scalping for ticket price increases. It said that service charges on Ticketmaster are not higher, but frequently lower, than competitor ticketing service pricing.
“The defining feature of a monopolist is monopoly profits derived from monopoly pricing. Live Nation in no way fits the profile,” the company said in the statement, which also disparaged the Biden Administration’s broader antitrust efforts. “Some call this ‘Anti-Monopoly’, but in reality it is just anti-business.”
On Monday, Clark said the case is not only extremely relatable — “Who hasn’t bought tickets, you know?” she said — but also yet another big lawsuit Vermont has joined in a “fascinating” era during which modern tech giants seem to have outgrown what she described as “ancient” antitrust laws.
Clark’s office also joined a multistate antitrust lawsuit against Amazon in March. And under one of Clark’s predecessors, TJ Donovan, the office joined a lawsuit against Google, which was heard alongside a separate lawsuit that resulted in a landmark antitrust decision earlier this month, in which a judge deemed Google to be a monopoly.
Clarification: An earlier version of this article was imprecise when referring to the company being sued by the federal government, Vermont and other states.
