The 2022 ticketing meltdown that enraged Taylor Swift fans is not proving easy for Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation to just shake off.
The Eras Tour ticketing fiasco took center stage as the federal Live Nation-Ticketmaster antitrust trial began with opening statements on Tuesday in Manhattan.
“We will present evidence from inside Live Nation and Ticketmaster that shows that their technology is held together by duct tape,” Assistant US Attorney David Dahlquist told jurors.
The Eras Tour ticketing disaster is a prime example of how a lack of competition let the entertainment giant foist an inferior product on fans, artists, and venues alike, Dahlquist said.
“They have prioritized growth over actually maintaining their systems,” the government lawyer told the ten women and two men on the jury.
“You’ll see documents and testimony about one specific, memorable incident about Miss Taylor Swift, and how, when her tickets went on sale, it was system failures, password outages, web pages going down, connection issues in their data systems,” he said.
In 2022, Ticketmaster’s website crashed amid a pre-sales event that was supposed to be exclusively for “verified” fans of Taylor Swift. At the time, Ticketmaster blamed bot attacks.
“This case is about power — the power of a monopolist to control competition,” Dahlquist said.
Instead of using tech to compete, Dahlquist said, the company uses threats and its industry monopoly to force venues to use Ticketmaster. Live Nation is the world’s largest concert promoter and a major owner and operator of event venues. Ticketmaster is the world’s largest ticket seller.
“If a customer wants to leave Live Nation, Ticketmaster, they threaten them to stay,” he said, adding, “That is not healthy competition. That is a broken marketplace.”
Joining the DOJ at trial are lawyers for 39 states and the District of Columbia, who have also sued to split Live Nation and are seeking monetary damages for fans.
Live Nation Entertainment has denied the allegations and is expected to argue that artists and the free market set ticket prices — not the company. It’s also expected to push back on the idea that ticket prices are over-priced, especially when compared to tickets for major sporting events.
In their own opening statements, a lawyer for Live Nation said that the live events industry is more competitive than it has ever been.
“Concerts are better than they have ever been before,” said the lawyer, David R. Marriott. “And they bring more joy to people’s lives.”
Live Nation will prove at trial that there remains “intense competition in the markets that are relevant to this case,” Marriott told the jury.
“Yes, it is true that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have a lot of customers,” he said.
“There are a lot of artists who are interested in being promoted by Live Nation. There are a lot of venues that want Live Nation as their ticketers,” he added. “But every customer we get is a hard-fought battle in a competitive market,” he added.
Live Nation does not control every artist, every venue, every ticket sold in the market, but “every customer we win, we fight hard to win,” not through threats, but through “the quality of the products, the quality of the services,” he told the jury.
A Justice Department win could force Live Nation to split with Ticketmaster.
The trial is expected to last six weeks and elicit testimony from a veritable who’s who of industry insiders. Named on various witness lists filed with the court include musician Kid Rock; Matthew Caldwell, CEO of the Minnesota Timberwolves; and Michael Rapino, CEO and president of Live Nation Entertainment.
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