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Don’t expect Live Nation’s Joe Berchtold to be quoting Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on ticketing Tuesday. Unlike the pop star’s “I’m the problem it’s me” chorus-turned-meme, the company’s president and CFO plans to take aim at who he says are the real culprits behind Swift’s disastrous Nov. 15 presale — scalpers.
While the Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster was villianized for weeks following the presale for Swift’s upcoming The Eras tour that both broke single-day sales records and threw fans into a fury over service issues, according to a prepared opening statement reviewed by Billboard, Berchtold plans to lay much of the blame on scalpers who used illegal bots to attack the online sale. The statement, to be delivered Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to the committee led by ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ilinois), details Ticketmaster’s ongoing “arms race” against scalpers illegally using autonomous software to disrupt and attack high profile ticket sales. Country music legend Garth Brooks is lending his support to Berchtold’s testimony as well, with a letter defending Ticketmaster and attacking ticket scalpers who use illegal methods to buy up tickets.
“We knew bots would attack [Swift’s] onsale, and planned accordingly,” reads Berchtold’s planned statement. “We were then hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we had ever experienced, and for the first time in 400 Verified Fan onsales they came after our Verified Fan access code servers. While the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets, the attack required us to slow down and even pause our sales. This is what led to a terrible consumer experience that we deeply regret.”
Following the Nov. 15 presale, Ticketmaster eventually canceled its general onsale for the remaining 170,000 tickets to Swift’s tour. In December, the company announced a new strategy to sell the passes over the course of four weeks and recently concluded that effort. At the time, the company said “historically unprecedented demand” caused the failure, but blamed bots then, too — saying, 14 million fans and more than 3 billion bots hit the site. That excuse did little to satisfy the more than 100,000 fans who kicked out of line during the bot attack, and even the singer spoke out blaming the company. With many fans calling for Ticketmaster’s punishment, Berchtold also plans to apologize directly to Swift and her followers.
“As we said after the onsale, and I reiterate today, we apologize to the many disappointed fans as well as to Ms. Swift,” his statement reads.
While Berchtold notes Ticketmaster “accepts its responsibility to be the first line of defense against bots in this ever- escalating arms race,” he intends to shift the hearing’s focus to policy changes that could tamp down on scalpers.
“In this forum where we are here to discuss public policy, we also need to recognize how industrial scalpers breaking the law using bots and cyberattacks to try to unfairly gain tickets contributes to an awful consumer experience,” his statement reads. “We are doing everything we can to fight the people who attack our onsales and steal tickets meant for real fans, but we need help passing real reforms to stop this arms race.”
Brooks, in his statement, supports this notion.
“The crush of bots during an on-sale is a huge reason for program failure NO MATTER WHO THE TICKET SELLING COMPANY is,” writes the country icon in his letter addressed to Congress. “And the one who ALWAYS pays for this atrocity is the customer, the LAST one on whom that burden should fall.”
Brooks notes in his letter that he forced Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to allow him to use Ticketmaster to sell tickets to his April concert at AT&T Stadium, instead of SeatGeek which held the exclusive contract to ticket the stadium.
“I had grown to love and trust the people at Ticketmaster so much,” he explained in his letter, noting, “this was not because of Ticketmaster, but a choice I made.”
Berchtold will be joined on the witness stand by SeatGeek chief executive Jack Groetzinger and longtime Chicago promoter Jerry Mickelson with JAM Productions, along with recording artist Clyde Lawrence and representatives from the James Madison Institute and American Antitrust Institute.
Ticketmaster officials are expecting a pile on, both from Congress and the other testifying witnesses. SeatGeek has filed a number of complaints against Ticketmaster with the Department of Justice for alleged anti-trust violations, and Mickelson testified before Congress in 2010, condemning the merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. While company officials aren’t expecting any standing ovations, Berchtold’s testimony will be an important preview of the company’s framing of the challenges facing the business over the next couple of years and promises to be the most detailed defense of Live Nation by an executive in its 18-year history.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) originally called for this hearing in response to public anger over the technical failures of the Taylor Swift Eras ticket sale. But the witness list and the name of the hearing, “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment,” released Monday (Jan. 23) suggest that the hearing is more likely to focus on long-simmering dissatisfaction over the 2010 consent decree governing the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation. That consent decree has had mixed success creating a level playing field for competition in the ticketing business, and critics consider it a failure because it didn’t prevent Ticketmaster from becoming the dominant ticketing company it is today.
“We hear people say that ticketing markets are less competitive today than they were at the time of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. That is simply not true,” reads Berchtold’s statements, claiming Ticketmaster’s market share has decreased since the DOJ estimated it held 80% of the market in 2009.
At the time, Ticketmaster “did not face the level of competition we face today from new competitors including SeatGeek, AEG’s AXS, and Eventbrite, along with established competitors including Tickets.com and Paciolan,” Berchtold continues. “Today, there is intense competition for every ticketing contract that goes out to bid — far more than there was in 2010. Ticketmaster has lost, not gained, market share, and every year competitive bidding results in ticketing companies getting less of the economic value in a ticketing contract while venues and teams get more. The bottom line is that U.S. ticketing markets have never been more competitive than they are today, and we read about new potential entrants all the time.”
Berchtold plans to present the threat posed by bad actors and malicious software as an issue both the government and the private sector must address together. The strategy shifts part of the criticism for the Taylor Swift ticket debacle onto the Senate — which unanimously voted to pass the BOTS act in 2016, effectively outlawing automated ticket-buying technology. Since its passage, the law has only been enforced twice by the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission, despite pleas from Ticketmaster officials that bot attacks on high profile ticket sales are increasing in frequency and complexity, sources tell Billboard. Berchtold also plans to detail how the company has spent more than $1 billion developing technology to prevent bot attacks on the company’s ticket sales using software like Verified Fan and digital ticketing.
A ‘blame the bots’ strategy is not likely to satisfy the members of the Senate Judiciary committee, which include such conservative and liberal firebrands such as Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), Diane Fienstein (D-California), Corey Booker (D-New Jersey) and Richard Blumenthal (D-New Jersey). Anti-Ticketmaster sentiment and criticism of the 2010 merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation is one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill.
Berchtold will end his testimony laying out calls to action he believes Congress can take to combat bad actors in the ticketing industry: First, is empowering private parties like Ticketmaster to bring civil actions against ticket sellers who knowingly sell tickets obtained by bots. Second, Berchtold believes Congress should act to outlaw deceptive sales practices like speculative ticket sales “offering for sale tickets you don’t own or have an existing right to obtain,” or deceptive sites that mislabel themselves as “the official” ticket seller for shows they aren’t contracted to work with.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment” begins at 10 a.m. EST on Tuesday. Click here to watch the hearing live.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Jan. 24 at 10 a.m. EST examining the ticketing industry and Ticketmaster’s handling of the Taylor Swift ticket sale, Senator Amy Klobuchar‘s (D-MN) office announced.
Titled “That’s The Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment,” the hearing will look at accusations of anti-competitive behavior in the ticketing space and examine the history of the 2010 Department of Justice consent decree governing the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
The merger has long been criticized by members of both parties with Klobuchar recently identifying the Swift crash as an example of how “Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services.”
The Nov. 15 sale crash, which affected both Ticketmaster and its competitor SeakGeek, was the result of massive demand from Taylor Swift fans and an illegal bot attack, Ticketmaster wrote in a Nov. 15 blog post.
Klobuchar, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, will be joined at the hearing by ranking member Mike Lee (R-UT) for the hearing before the full Senate Judiciary Committee with Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) and incoming ranking member Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
“The issues within America’s ticketing industry were made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift’s new tour, but these problems are not new. For too long, consumers have faced high fees, long waits, and website failures, and Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company faces inadequate pressure to innovate and improve,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “At next week’s hearing, we will examine how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industries harms customers and artists alike. Without competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.”
“American consumers deserve the benefit of competition in every market, from grocery chains to concert venues,” Lee added. “I look forward to exercising our subcommittee’s oversight authority to ensure that anticompetitive mergers and exclusionary conduct are not crippling an entertainment industry already struggling to recover from pandemic lockdowns.”
“It’s been more than a decade since Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation, and competition in the ticketing and live entertainment industries has only gotten worse. Too often, consumers are the ones who pay the price for this market failure,” said Durbin. “I look forward to this hearing to explore what led to this environment, as well as steps we can take to bring competition back to these industries in a way that puts fans and artists first.”
“I’m glad to see the committee will look into the Ticketmaster debacle,” said Graham. “I look forward to hearing more about how we got here, and identifying solutions.”
A witness list has not been released for the Jan. 24 hearing. A spokesperson for Ticketmaster did not comment when asked about the upcoming hearing.
The Recording Academy is celebrating a “major global victory” for music as the PEACE For Music Diplomacy Act passes through the House and the Senate as part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The Senate voted Thursday (Dec. 15) to approve the massive defense bill, which includes The PEACE (Promoting Peace, Education, and Cultural Exchange) Act. This follows the House’s bipartisan passage of the paperwork last week.
The Recording Academy has thrown its advocacy efforts behind the bill since it was first introduced January in the House by 2022 Grammys on the Hill honorees Rep. Michael McCaul and former Rep. Ted Deutch.
The act, it has been said, would use music and music-related global exchange programs as a tool to build cross-cultural understanding.
Specifically, the Recording Academy notes, the bill leverages partnerships with the private sector when designing and implementing its music-related exchange programs, and authorizes music-related exchanges that “advance peace abroad.”
At October’s District Advocate Day, almost 2,000 Recording Academy members met with Congressional reps to discuss pending legislation affecting creators, including the PEACE Through Music Diplomacy Act.
The behind-the-scenes advocacy work and passage of the bipartisan $858 billion defense bill is a reminder of “the power of music and its capacity to increase understanding between diverse cultures and people around the world,” comments Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr.
The legislation is now on President Joe Biden’s desk awaiting his signature.
“The Recording Academy is grateful to Rep. McCaul, former Rep. Deutch, and Senators Leahy and Tillis for their support of this important legislation, and we look forward to championing future cross-sector partnerships that will allow music creators to promote peace across the globe.”
Read more here on the NDAA.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is following up last week’s open letter to Live Nation over “dramatic service failures” during the Taylor Swift presale with a hearing on competition across the ticketing industry. The senator and her across-the-aisle counterpart on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), jointly announced the hearing, with a date and witness list forthcoming.
“Last week, the competition problem in ticketing markets was made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase concert tickets,” said Klobuchar, without mentioning Swift. “The high fees, site disruptions and cancellations that customers experienced shows how Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve.”
Klobuchar said the hearing will examine the effects of consolidation across ticketing — namely that a lack of competition suppresses the need to improve services and maintain fair pricing.
Lee added that consumers “deserve the benefit of competition in every market, from grocery chains to concert venues. I look forward to exercising our Subcommittee’s oversight authority to ensure that anticompetitive mergers and exclusionary conduct are not crippling an entertainment industry already struggling to recover from pandemic lockdowns.”
Aside from a possible grilling by U.S. senators, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are said to be under investigation by the Justice Department as to whether the company maintains an illegal monopoly over the live event ticketing ecosystem. The probe, according to The New York Times, predates this current debacle involving Swift’s tour presale.
Ticketmaster has apologized for the debacle, which started Nov. 15 when millions of Swift fans overwhelmed a presale for her Eras Tour — causing site crashes and hours-long waits, with many fans left empty-handed and — possibly newly engaged in politics. Ticketmaster went on to cancel the general sale as well.
“I apologize to all our fans. We are working hard on this,” Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei said in an appearance on CNBC last Thursday. “Building capacity for peak demand is something we attempt to do, but this exceeded every expectation.”
Swift’s tour is actually being promoted by Live Nation competitor AEG, which has told Billboard it “didn’t have a choice” in terms of ticketing sales and distribution because of Ticketmaster’s “exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on the Eras tour.”
Ticketmaster and Live Nation have long been dogged by accusations that they exert an unfair dominance over the market for live concerts, particularly since they merged in 2010 to create their current structure. The combined entity has operated for its entire existence under a so-called consent decree imposed by the DOJ when it approved the merger. Under the decree, Live Nation is prohibited from retaliating against venues that refuse to use Ticketmaster. Those restrictions were set to expire in 2020 but were extended by five years in 2019 after the DOJ accused Live Nation of repeatedly violating the decree.
