- 2 days ago
We're taking a hard look at how one company came to dominate the live event industry and why its grip on ticket sales has fans, artists, and regulators fighting back. From exclusivity deals and skyrocketing fees to lawsuits and monopoly allegations, this deep dive explores whether stadium shows can survive a system built around control, convenience, and controversy. What does the future of live music look like?
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NewsTranscript
00:00May I suggest, respectfully, that Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say,
00:05I'm the problem. It's me.
00:07Welcome to Ms. Mojo.
00:09And today, we're looking at how Ticketmaster came to dominate the ticket retail industry,
00:13as well as what recent legal consequences could mean for live music and beyond.
00:18We thought we'd try and explain exactly why Bat Bunny tickets are so expensive,
00:22who is making money off them, and what you might be able to do about it
00:26that does not involve selling your husband's feet.
00:30It was around the 2020s when the term Ticketmaster Effect entered online discussions
00:34about the ticket retailers' impact on the structure and market of the live event industry.
00:39But the phenomenon dates back to Fred Rosen's push for dominance as the company's CEO in the 1990s.
00:45The truth was, it was a great business, it was a lot of fun,
00:50and you had a chance to create a solar system that had never been done before.
00:55He believed that concert tickets were, quote,
00:57the most underpriced commodity in America.
00:59Now, it's considered one of the most overpriced,
01:02and much of the blame falls on Live Nation Entertainment controlling roughly 70% of that market.
01:08It owns, operates, has a stake in, or exclusively book shows for around 390 venues across more than 50 countries.
01:15From amphitheaters to the House of Blues,
01:18it also has a controlling stake in festivals like Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo.
01:22On May 23, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit that could finally break the company's
01:29open monopoly.
01:30But this could have consequences on an entire industry that Ticketmaster has long manipulated.
01:35Of course, they own the ticket company, but they might also own the promoter,
01:39the venue, and could even manage the artist.
01:41Master Plan
01:42Four men in Phoenix, Arizona founded Ticketmaster in 1976 to license computer ticketing systems.
01:48The modest startup didn't stand a chance against industry leader Ticketron,
01:53but after investor Jay Pritzker bought them in 1982,
01:56he appointed Fred Rosen to lead an aggressive expansion from the new headquarters in Los Angeles.
02:01In those days, the business was driven by very low service charges and very low service.
02:09So nobody saw the ticket business as a real business.
02:13They saw the Ticketron mentality as we're a utility.
02:16The plan was to secure exclusivity contracts with major venues and promoters
02:21through incentives that imposed higher fees on customers.
02:25Where Ticketron took less than a dollar in service fees,
02:28Ticketmaster's surcharge was over $2 per transaction.
02:32Handling charge, I mean, just to touch it, they charge you $3.
02:35Fans complained, but venues signed on because, and this was the key part,
02:41Ticketmaster let those venues keep most of the fee.
02:44They fought their main competitor in 1991, thus gaining control of 80% of the concert ticketing market.
02:51They've always been at the forefront of the industry's now dominant online retail sector.
02:56They've also always represented the exploitation that comes with such business practices.
03:00Can't go into most of the venues that we would normally play in,
03:03so we can't go to most of the cities we would normally go to.
03:06That, Pearl Jam claims, is because the best-known sites have exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster.
03:11If they don't sell the tickets, you don't play there.
03:13Ticket to court.
03:14It wasn't a competitor, consumer, or government agency to first take Ticketmaster to court.
03:20It was Pearl Jam, who in 1994 tried to take a stand against the company's pricing policies.
03:25Pearl Jam wanted to cap its ticket price at $20, asking Ticketmaster to limit its service charge to $1.80.
03:31The band says the stalemate that resulted has kept them off the road this summer.
03:35Ticketmaster says Pearl Jam won't compromise.
03:37When Ticketmaster refused, the band took a $3 million hit to prematurely cancel their tour,
03:43then filed an antitrust complaint with the DOJ.
03:46They testified before Congress that the company leveraged their position to secure contracts and inflate prices.
03:52Do you think Ticketmaster's entitled to a profit?
03:54I think our main concern is, are we entitled to use a different company other than Ticketmaster?
03:59One of the biggest bands in the world struggled to book even small shows
04:03when they boycotted Ticketmaster for their 95 tour.
04:05A year after the DOJ dropped their investigation, Ticketmaster LLC went public with a $2.8 billion valuation,
04:13just in time for online sales and international expansion.
04:17Pearl Jam's noble crusade ultimately just made the company legally untouchable for two decades.
04:22Let me just leave you with this observation.
04:25When art is successful, it unavoidably becomes a business.
04:31The question then is whether artists have an inherent right to control the limits of their business
04:38and how it relates to the growth of their art.
04:40Dominating the charts.
04:43Ticketmaster's Michael Rapinoe era saw the acquisition of the reseller Tickets Now
04:47and leading talent management group Frontline.
04:50Their most controversial move came in 2010,
04:52when a merger with the event promoter Live Nation formed the conglomerate Live Nation Entertainment.
04:57They were no longer brokering the price of admission.
05:00They were literally running the shows.
05:02When you have that type of integration, it can create certain types of conflicts of interest.
05:06At the time, there was a concern that Ticketmaster might use its position to tie those things together
05:12and to say, well, in order to have access to this venue, you actually have to use our ticketing site.
05:17The DOJ's approval came with a consent decree that prevented exclusive ownership of software and subsidiaries for 10 years.
05:24Still, the company's pressure on competition was felt across all live event industries.
05:29It has control over everything from which venues artists play to who can actually buy tickets and when.
05:36A lot of artists and venue operators haven't really had the ability to speak out about it for fear of
05:42being blacklisted.
05:43In 2015, the NBA team Golden State Warriors announced a policy that would void season tickets resold outside of a
05:50Ticketmaster exchange.
05:51StubHub responded by hitting Ticketmaster with their first antitrust suit since the Pearl Jam episode.
05:57The judge dismissing allegations of a conspiracy to intimidate consumers set a dangerous precedent for Live Nation's anti-competition tactics.
06:05If you bought a ticket any time recently, you know by paying those super competitive charges for access to tickets
06:14that there's a monopolist there,
06:17that monopolist is exercising their monopoly power.
06:20Ticket market.
06:20In 2024, CBS News reported that ticket prices had increased 140% since the launch of Live Nation Entertainment.
06:28In that time, the entertainment industry had been drastically altered by piracy, streaming, and expanding concert productions.
06:36But 80% of its most lucrative sector being controlled by one company can't be discounted. Pun intended.
06:42It's diverse, spread across amphitheaters, clubs, theaters, and stadiums.
06:46So our business ongoing all the time is kind of this diverse portfolio across a global portfolio also.
06:52Since its inception, LNE has established or acquired dozens of international subsidiaries in the ticketing, venue, and management industries.
07:00Competitors of Ticketmaster alone have a better chance of survival as a second-hand retailer than as a primary ticket
07:06vendor.
07:07There's really no one that's been able to get the type of scale that Live Nation has.
07:11The closest comparable is Anschutz Entertainment Group with their own kind of internal ticketing platform.
07:16But, you know, they made a statement that speaks to the market power of Ticketmaster, which is that they used
07:22Ticketmaster to ticket Taylor Swift.
07:24By the time the DOJ's consent decree expired in 2020, it was apparent that LNE had used predatory tactics beyond
07:31its market status to eliminate competition.
07:34The response at the time was merely to extend the decree with stricter compliance guidelines and a $1 million penalty
07:40per violation.
07:41What was that to a company that was worth over $15 billion by the end of that year?
07:46For you? Come on. You can cough it up.
07:50All right, let's call it a million. I love that.
07:53Scalping off the top.
07:54There's compelling evidence of illegal practices to maintain Ticketmaster's market stronghold.
08:00This includes violating their consent decree by locking venues into egregiously long exclusivity contracts and penalizing them for signing with
08:08competitors.
08:09More recently, they've deliberately limited oversight of algorithms that inflate prices based on demand.
08:14Perhaps the most sinister allegations relate to the age-old hustle of brokers buying up tickets to grossly upsell them.
08:21Scalping has evolved in the digital age to the point of using bots to practically industrialize this process.
08:27So that's Ticketmaster telling us that they have brokers who have hundreds of Ticketmaster fake accounts,
08:37and they don't care that they're using those fake accounts to buy up all the tickets and then repost them
08:43for resale,
08:44so long as Ticketmaster's getting a cut, of course.
08:46In 2018, CBC and the Toronto Star collaborated on a probe which found that Ticketmaster allowed scalpers to use the
08:53bots if they resold on their platform.
08:55While LNE has denied collusion, it's harder to argue that business as usual is responsible for consumer stress.
09:02The fees have become so massive that they're popularly referred to as a Ticketmaster tax.
09:07This is a Chicago ticket. You can see one ticket is going for $2,659.
09:13It has a service fee tacked onto it at $618.
09:19That's a 23% service charge.
09:22Standing room.
09:23In 1994, Pearl Jam brought the force of the U.S. government over their tickets not costing around $20 total.
09:30For Taylor Swift's 2023 Eras Tour, the median ticket price was over $250 before fees.
09:37And the markup on the secondary market was over 2,000%.
09:41I love Taylor so much and I want to be there so badly, but that is such a huge financial
09:46burden.
09:47Ticketmaster was already facing controversy over online traffic crashing their website when presales went live, with no alternate retailer.
09:55All of this represented the cruelest flaws of a system that one company has practically dictated for decades.
10:01So in 2022, 26 customers filed a class action suit alleging that L&E artificially inflated prices, colluded with scalpers,
10:09and violated their consent decree.
10:12Now, plaintiffs hoping to break up what they believe is a monopoly, demanding $2,500 for each violation.
10:18The tickets are so overpriced that the average person isn't going to be able to go anymore.
10:22The ensuing public outcry led to the DOJ and 40 states filing an antitrust suit, then the Federal Trade Commission
10:29taking legal action with seven states.
10:31Consumers finally taking a stand against their alleged exploitation made this happen.
10:35But with L&E's hold on a massive industry, what would be the consequences of their loss?
10:40It is time for fans and artists to stop paying the price for Live Nation's monopoly.
10:47It is time to restore competition and innovation in the entertainment industry.
10:53Closing act.
10:54Live Nation Entertainment currently promotes over 70% of U.S. tours, contracts around 400 venues, and controls roughly 70
11:02% of the ticketing market.
11:04The U.S. government has made strides to reel in this open monopoly's more predatory methods.
11:09Musicians lower their prices so that their fans can get in, and that means that on these secondary markets, brokers
11:15and the secondary markets like Ticketmaster got to pocket those profits.
11:19It's totally unfair. It's totally wrong. It's also illegal. That's why we're in court.
11:23The FTC's rule on unfair or deceptive fees requires businesses to state all-in prices up front.
11:29This cracks down on Ticketmaster's alleged bait-and-switch scam of introducing junk fees at checkout.
11:35If this proposed rule is finalized as proposed, the FTC would have the power to impose financial penalties on companies
11:43that don't disclose their full upfront price and secure refunds for customers who have been defrauded by companies charging hidden
11:51fees.
11:52A Trump executive order in 2025 strengthened this policy and enforcement of anti-scalping practices.
11:58If LNE is found guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly, it would likely break up.
12:04This would reshape the event industry by allowing for competition and lower ticket prices to everyone's benefit.
12:10Making sure that concert venues are able to pick the ticketing vendor that they want and not be forced to
12:16pick a Ticketmaster in the interest and to allow for startups and entrepreneurs and new entrants to the market to
12:25actually enter the market and compete.
12:27It's worth noting that venues would face efficiency issues and fragmented costs without vertical integration.
12:33This could negatively impact the logistics of tours.
12:36Long-term benefits still look promising if the event market continues to grow.
12:40Even stadium shows could thrive without corporate efficiency, as is evidenced by Europe's more competition-driven model.
12:47The outcome of the LNE case could set the tone for how to address monopolies in other sectors of the
12:52music industry.
12:53Ticketmaster's so-called hidden fees just makes this monopoly harder to hide.
12:58As an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know all too well.
13:03What's your take on Ticketmaster's role in the industry and the drama that comes with it?
13:07Find your seat in the comments.
13:09Ticketmaster's role in the audience.
13:11Ticketmaster's role in the audience.
13:13Ticketmaster's role in the audience.
13:13Ticketmaster's role in the audience.
13:13Ticketmaster's role in the audience.
13:13Ticketmaster's role in the audience.
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