The debacle surrounding the advance ticket sale for superstar Taylor Swift’s (33) US stadium tour also occupied the US Congress yesterday. At a public hearing by the Judiciary Committee, senators targeted the concert ticket provider Ticketmaster. “They have a clear dominance, a monopolistic control. The whole concert ticket system is a mess, a monopolistic mess,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said at the start of the session.
The background is that Ticketmaster stopped pre-sales for the tour in November. The enormous demand and a “breathtaking number of bot attacks” led to a historic record of hits on the website, it said. This collapsed.
Live Nation bosses sound contrite
“We knew bots would attack this sale and planned accordingly. We were then faced with three times the amount of bot traffic we’ve ever seen,” said Live Nation president Joe Berchtold. Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, the companies merged in 2010.
The bots didn’t break into the system, but they did shut it down, he said. “This resulted in a terrible customer experience that we deeply regret. We apologize to the fans. Our apologies to Ms. Swift.”
Ticketmaster with de facto monopoly?
Ticketmaster’s market power was also a central topic of the hearing. “Competition policy is very important to me. I believe in capitalism and to have a strong capitalist system you have to have competition, you can’t have too much consolidation,” said Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. Berchtold rejected the accusation that there is less competition these days. Another topic at the meeting was the lack of transparency in service fees when purchasing tickets.
Berchtold insisted that Ticketmaster could not set the prices or fees for tickets, that was the responsibility of the concert organizers. However, Live Nation owns only five percent of the concert halls.
Competitor demands: Undo the merger
The boss of the competitor Seat Geek, Jack Groetzinger, disagreed. Because even if Live Nation does not own the hall, it prevents competition by concluding long-term contracts with the concert organizers to provide ticketing. And if they are not willing to cooperate with Ticketmaster, they are threatened that certain stars who are under contract with Live Nation will not perform with them. “The only way to restore competition is to reverse the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation,” Goetzinger said.
At the hearing, singer-songwriter Clyde Lawrence of the New York pop band Lawrence emphasized that artists are at a disadvantage if Live Nation has contracts with or owns concert halls. As a result, bands would have little chance of negotiating a deal or hiring another ticket service.
