Something decades of legal scholars, millions in political lobbying, and the Biden administration couldn't, could be accomplished by Taylor Swift's legion of fans.
According to a New York Times report, the U.S. Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster. The investigation into the ticket selling powerhouse, long disdained by both consumers and artists alike, will focus on whether or not it has anti-competitive monopoly power in the music industry.
Swift fans desperate to purchase tickets for the artist's "The Eras" Tour caused the website to collapse. On Thursday, the day Swift's tickets were intended to become valuable to the public, Ticketmaster canceled all ticket sales. The sale was canceled due to high demand for tickets and insufficient remaining tickets.
The disastrous handling of Swift's tickets will most likely come up in the investigation, but DOJ officials have reportedly had their eyes on Ticketmaster for months. Music venues, as well as others within the industry, have been contacted by investigators to try and determine whether or not the business practices of Ticketmaster are a monopoly. The merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster in 2010 resulted in Live Nation being one of the industry's largest players at the time.
The DOJ investigators are not the only ones looking into the company. Following a groundswell of complaints from Swift fans, the Attorneys General of Tennessee and North Carolina launched their own investigations into the company's business practices. According to reports, members of Congress will hold a hearing by the end of the year where they will discuss aspects of the business that consumers have decried for a long time.
The power of the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate. The type of service failures we saw this week were caused by consumers paying the price.
Swift, who has been criticized for her alleged involvement in the ticketing drama, spoke out against the company this week on her social media accounts.
There are a lot of reasons why people had a hard time getting tickets and I am trying to figure out how this situation can be improved. We asked them multiple times if they could handle the demand and we were assured they could. A lot of the people who got tickets feel like they went through a lot of bear attacks to get them.
Swift fans' sustained outrage has led to antitrust concerns being fast tracked. A news campaign was launched earlier this year by an alliance of organizations. The coalition believes that Ticketmaster has exploited customers and held sports and music fans hostage in order to maintain its market dominance.
Live Nation-Ticketmaster has been accused of abusing fans, artists, venues, and live events professionals. Over 40,000 people have called on the DOJ to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster, a corporation that has bent and broken the industry to its will since it's entities merged.
Live Nation Entertainment did not reply immediately.
The Swift fans backlash is the latest in a long line of vocal complaints against the company. Fans were forced to pay high prices for general admission tickets for the band's reunion tour. There is an anti-scalping feature created in coordination with Bruce Springsteen that is responsible for the absurd prices. The model is intended to measure the market price of a concert ticket and jack up prices high enough to effectively wean out sellers. Consumers are priced out of tickets completely by the system.
Critics have accused the company of price gouging, as well as rolling out ever more complicated and difficult to understand fees.
Helen Brosnan, Executive Director of Fight Corporate Monopolies said in a statement that everyday Americans are being ripped off by the company for wanting to see their favorite sports teams and artists perform. Their merger has resulted in consumers being held hostage by a company that uses its monopoly power to make everyones experience miserable. It should have never happened in the first place.
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