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The Justice Department and several states are joining together to sue Live Nation Entertainment in connection to Ticketmaster, whose side accuses the company of owning a monopoly on live entertainment. Justice Department officials are accusing Ticketmaster of blocking out potential opportunities for other companies by striking exclusive ticket and venue deals that essentially gave them the lion’s share of the market.
The New York Times reports that based on the accounts of unnamed invidious close to the matter, the federal government, along with a grouping of states that were not announced in the outlet’s report. The position that will be taken when the matter goes to court is the accusation that Live Nation struck exclusive ticketing contracts with certain concert venues and served as the main ticket hub for concert tours.
Further, the government will claim that other business factors such as venue management according to insiders, aided Live Nation in becoming a monopoly by passing on high costs to consumers and causing damage to any competitors’ efforts to enter the field. Further, the DOJ will state within the lawsuit that tours that were promoted by the entertainment company were more likely to play shows where Ticketmaster had exclusive rights to ticket sales.
Ticketmaster reportedly sells about 600 million tickets annually according to global tallies. It is estimated that the company’s ticketing business is responsible for between 70 and 80 percent of major concert venues domestically.
In 2023, a congressional hearing was held that was sparked by a frenzied Taylor Swift tour presale event which millions of fans were unable to participate in. Both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate called the company a monopoly
The lawsuit will be filed in the Southern District of New York.
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Photo: Getty
The Justice Department and eight states sued Google on Tuesday, alleging that its dominance in digital advertising harms competition as well as consumers and advertisers — including the U.S. government.
The government alleges that Google’s plan to assert dominance has been to “neutralize or eliminate” rivals through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ products.
The antitrust suit was filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Tuesday that Google’s dominance in the ad market means fewer publishers are able to offer their products without charging subscription or other fees, because they can’t rely on competition in the advertising market to keep ad prices low.
As a result of Google’s dominance, he said, “website creators earn less and advertisers pay more.”
The department’s suit accuses Google of unlawfully monopolizing the way ads are served online by excluding competitors. This includes its 2008 acquisition of DoubleClick, a dominant ad server, and subsequent rollout of technology that locks in the split-second bidding process for ads that get served on Web pages.
Google’s ad manager lets large publishers who have significant direct sales manage their advertisements. The ad exchange, meanwhile, is a real-time marketplace to buy and sell online display ads.
The lawsuit demands that Google break off three different businesses from its core business of search, YouTube and other products such as Gmail: the buying and selling of ads and ownership of the exchange where that business is transacted.
Garland said that “for 15 years, Google has pursued a course of anti-competitive conduct” that has halted the rise of rival technologies and manipulated the mechanics of online ad auctions to force advertisers and publishers to use its tools.
In so doing, he added, “Google has engaged in exclusionary conduct” that has “severely weakened,” if not destroyed competition in the ad tech industry.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, said in a statement that the suit “doubles down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.”
Dina Srinivasan, a Yale University fellow and adtech expert, said the lawsuit is “huge” because it aligns the entire nation — state and federal governments — in a bipartisan legal offensive against Google.
This is the latest legal action taken against Google by either the Justice Department or local state governments. In October 2020, for instance, the Trump administration and eleven state attorneys general sued Google for violating antitrust laws, alleging anticompetitive practices in the search and search advertising markets.
The lawsuit in essence aligns the Biden administration and new states with the 35 states and District of Colombia that sued Google in December 2020 over the exact same issues.
The states taking part in the suit include California, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee.
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