How Live Nation Dominates the Ticketing Business

And why people are demanding justice.

If you’re an avid concert-goer like me, you know the hassle that is trying to buy concert tickets. You sign up for pre-sale, you’re on the website 30 minutes before it starts, you manage to successfully get the seats you want, and then when you go to check out; “$60 service fee, facility charge, and taxes”. This means you end up paying double the price of the tickets, which is not what you had planned.

So, why is this happening? There’s one huge company that dominates the live entertainment industry and that is Live Nation. The concert promotion company was founded in 1996 under the name SFX Entertainment and then in 2005 it was bought by Clear Channel Entertainment who renamed it Live Nation.¹ In 2010, Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster, which is a ticketing company, under the idea that the merger of these companies would increase sales and lower ticket prices and fees.

However, the complete opposite happened. With the merger of these two companies there are no other ticketing or production companies that could compete with them, meaning that concert-goers have no alternative but to purchase their tickets from the giant. We are currently in 2023 and from what we can see, concert tickets have tripled in price. According to Whitten at CNBC, Live Nation controls 70% of the ticketing and live events market and activists have called on the department of justice to reverse the merger due to recent scandals.²

Taylor Swift is undoubtedly one of the biggest artists and there's an extreme demand to see her live. In November of last year, the pop star announced she was touring again after not touring for three years. Of course, since there’s no alternative, the tickets would go live on Ticketmaster, aka Live Nation. The ticketing site was supposed to host a presale for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans, however, 14 million people joined the site at the same time, causing it to crash and leaving millions of Swifties unsatisfied and angry about not getting concert tickets.

Ticketmaster @Ticketmaster

Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.

This scandal raised red flags for people in authority positions in the U.S. Government, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (see below) and led to a Senate Judiciary Hearing where the company was called a monopoly. The senators on both sides accused Live Nation of abusing its power and might call for the break up of both companies, which have a contract signed with the Justice Department until 2025.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC

Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up.

I’m personally excited to see what the next steps are moving forward and I hope this monopoly gets broken up so that fans get accessible prices for concert tickets again and we can all go back to enjoying without breaking the bank.

1

“Live Nation.” Music Business Worldwide, 21 Jan. 2021.

Whitten, Sarah. “Ticketmaster’s largest shareholder blames massive demand − including from bots − for Taylor Swift ticket fiasco.” CNBC, 17 Nov. 2022.

2.