by Kate Santini
HARTFORD, CT — Concertgoers have long complained of ticket prices and scarcity, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, believes breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster is the remedy. Federal lawsuits allege the company unlawfully controls over 80% of primary ticket sales in the live music industry.
In a press conference in front of Hartford’s Webster Theater, Blumenthal advocated for the dissolution of the Ticketmaster and Live Nation trust along with additional remedies.
“Breaking up this company is overdue,” said Blumenthal. “It’s no accident that prices of concert tickets are skyrocketing, and that they seem to be disappearing, even as people try to buy them.”
“All of the local venues in Connecticut are victims of Ticketmaster/Live Nation because they are told you must use our service or we won’t provide you with the artist,” he said.
Consumers, fans, artists and venues are suffering from Ticketmaster/Live Nation using its market control to pressure artists to put tickets on the resale market before they are offered to the general public, Blumenthal said.
In April, a federal jury in New York ruled in an antitrust suit that Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, charged consumers an extra $1.72 on average in ticket fees.
The suit, which was spearheaded by a coalition of state attorney generals from over 30 states and the District of Columbia, including Connecticut, came in response to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s $280 million settlement with Ticketmaster/Live Nation that allowed the merger to stay intact.
In a statement released following the suit, Connecticut state attorney general William Tong said the verdict confirmed what fans, artists, venues and states had been saying for years.
“Live Nation and Ticketmaster built and maintained a system that shuts out competition and drives up prices. Even after the Department of Justice reached a weak and ill-conceived settlement, Connecticut and a coalition of other states refused to back down because we knew that deal did not go far enough,” he said.
Ticketmaster/Live Nation did not respond to requests for comment about Blumenthal’s proposing dissolution, but in an April response to the verdict in Manhattan, the company said, “The jury’s verdict is not the last word on this matter. Pending motions will determine whether the liability and damages rulings stand.”
The court is still awaiting a remedy proposal from the states involved, said the company. “We remain confident that the ultimate outcome of the States’ case will not be materially different than what is envisioned by the DOJ settlement.”
The companies merged in 2010. Concerns arose in 2022 in response to long ticketing queues to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour. Consumers reported excessive wait times, network crashes and inflated ticket prices.
As a ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Blumenthal released an investigative report in March on the company’s abuses titled “So Casually Cruel: How Ticketmaster’s Monopoly Supercharges Prices and Fees” demanding stronger remedies than those proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in its initial settlement.
“At each stage of the [ticket-buying] process, from primary tickets marked up by dynamic pricing algorithms, to secondary sales from consumers and ticket brokers, Ticketmaster has profited handsomely while Americans paid the price,” said the report.