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LONDON — The U.K. competition regulator has launched an investigation into Ticketmaster over its much-criticized sale of tickets for Oasis‘ reunion tour, which prompted hundreds of complaints from fans and fierce condemnation from British politicians.
The probe was announced by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Thursday (Sept. 5) – less than a week after tickets for Oasis’ Live ‘25 tour went on sale. The investigation will look into whether Ticketmaster broke consumer protection laws and engaged in “unfair commercial practices” by failing to notify ticket buyers in advance that prices would surge based on demand.
Standard standing, or general admission, tickets for Oasis’ U.K. and Ireland comeback tour were advertised as costing £148.50 ($195), but the price unexpectedly soared to £355.00 ($467) after several hours of being on sale due to high demand, provoking an angry backlash from fans.
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The CMA said its investigation would examine whether consumers were given “clear and timely information” to explain that the tickets would be subject to dynamic pricing, including the price they would eventually pay for purchases.
CMA officials will also look at whether people were put under pressure to buy tickets within a short period of time at a higher price than they originally intended to pay.
The competition regulator said it will be engaging with Ticketmaster, the band’s management and event organizers to gather evidence to assess whether the Live Nation-owned ticketing company broke consumer protection laws.
Officials will also consider whether to widen the scope of the investigation into other companies involved in the highly anticipated reunion tour, which is jointly promoted by Live Nation, SJM Concerts, MCD and DF Concerts.
Fans who purchased, or attempted to purchase, tickets from Ticketmaster for the shows are invited to submit evidence to the watchdog, including an screenshots they may have taken during the purchasing process. Submissions close on Sept. 19.
“It’s important that fans are treated fairly when they buy tickets, which is why we’ve launched this investigation,” said CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell in a statement.
“It’s clear that many people felt they had a bad experience and were surprised by the price of their tickets at check-out. We want to hear from fans who went through the process and may have encountered issues so that we can investigate whether existing consumer protection law has been breached,” said Cardell.
Ticketmaster did not respond to requests to comment when contacted by Billboard on Thursday. The company has previously stated that all ticket prices for Oasis’ reunion tour, including platinum, in-demand (dynamic) and VIP were set by the tour promoters and management.
In the fallout to the weekend’s ticketing furore, the British government said it would be looking into the practice of dynamic pricing for music concerts as part of its previously announced consultation into the secondary ticketing market.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had received 450 complaints about “misleading claims about availability and pricing” concerning the sale of Oasis’ tickets by Ticketmaster. The regulator said it was “carefully assessing these complaints” and couldn’t comment further.
Responding to the hundreds of complaints from frustrated fans, a representative of Oasis said on Wednesday that the decision to apply surge pricing to its reunion shows was made by the band’s management and tour promoters, and “and at no time [the group] had any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used.”
“While prior meetings between promoters, Ticketmaster and the band’s management resulted in a positive ticket sale strategy, which would be a fair experience for fans, including dynamic ticketing to help keep general ticket prices down as well as reduce touting, the execution of the plan failed to meet expectations,” said the statement from Oasis’ publicist. “All parties involved did their utmost to deliver the best possible fan experience, but due to the unprecedented demand this became impossible to achieve.”
Earlier this week, Oasis announced the addition of two new dates at London’s Wembley Stadium to next year’s tour, bringing the total number of shows up to 19. To avoid a repeat of the weekend’s on sale debacle, tickets to the two new Wembley shows are to be sold via an invitation only ballot that gives preference to fans who failed to get tickets in the initial launch.
According to organizers, the Oasis Live ’25 tour was the biggest concert launch ever seen in the U.K. and Ireland with more than 10 million people from 158 countries attempting to buy tickets, which all sold out in less than a day.
LONDON — The British government has pledged to look into the practice of dynamic pricing for music concerts after tickets for Oasis‘ highly anticipated reunion tour more than doubled in price on official ticketing platforms, prompting hundreds of complaints from disgruntled fans.
Tickets for the band’s 17-date U.K. and Ireland 2025 tour went on sale Saturday morning with prices starting at £65.00 ($85.00) for seating and £148.50 for standing tickets.
Fans’ excitement quickly turned to anger, however, after enduring long queues on the tour’s primary ticketing vendor, Ticketmaster, and then discovering that the cost of a standing ticket had soared to £355.00 without warning when they finally got to the front of the queue – due to high demand.
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Although tickets to all 17 shows sold out in less than a day, the unexpected price hikes provoked an angry backlash against Oasis and Ticketmaster from fans with hundreds venting their frustration on social media.
In response, the U.K. culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said it was “depressing to see vastly inflated prices excluding ordinary fans from having a chance of enjoying their favourite band live.”
The cabinet minister said that dynamic pricing is one of the issues the government would be looking at as part of its previously announced consultation on the secondary ticketing market, which is due to begin in the fall.
Transparency and the technology that ticketing companies use to incentivize dynamic pricing would also be examined as part of the forthcoming review, said Nandy, adding that the newly elected Labour government is “committed to putting fans back at the heart of music.”
“Working with artists, industry and fans we can create a fairer system that ends the scourge of touts, rip-off resales and ensures tickets at fair prices,” she said in a statement.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live on Monday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer echoed the culture secretary’s concerns over secondary ticketing and said the government will get a “grip” on the issue of dynamic pricing to “make sure that actually tickets are available at a price that people can actually afford.”
“This is really important, because this isn’t just an Oasis problem,” Starmer told the BBC. “This is a problem for tickets for all sorts of events, where people go online straight away… and within seconds sometimes, sometimes minutes, all the tickets are gone, and the prices start going through the roof, which means many people can’t afford it.”
On Monday (Sept. 2), the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had received 450 complaints about “misleading claims about availability and pricing” concerning the sale of Oasis’ tickets by Ticketmaster. The regulator said it was “carefully assessing these complaints” and couldn’t comment further. Ticketmaster did not respond to requests to comment when approached by Billboard.
Priced Out
Although dynamic ticket pricing has become an increasingly regular occurrence in the U.S. live music industry in recent years, Oasis’ comeback tour – which is being jointly promoted by Live Nation, SJM Concerts, MCD and DF Concerts – marks its most high-profile and potentially biggest roll out for live music concerts in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
As in other countries, the practice is commonly used by travel companies, taxis and hotels in the U.K., but it is understood to have only been fleetingly used for gigs and tours so far in the British touring market and, when it has, has failed to draw major scrutiny or attention.
The furore around dynamic pricing from U.K. politicians is further unwelcome news for Ticketmaster owner Live Nation, which was hit with an antitrust lawsuit earlier this year, filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and a group of 30 states, who accuse the concert giant of market dominance and demanding that it and Ticketmaster be broken up.
In the U.K., competition regulators looking into the live music business have so far largely focused on resale ticketing platforms such as Viagogo, which has previously been subject to numerous controversies, investigations and inquiries, culminating in the firm being ordered to offload its StubHub business outside of North America in 2021.
Calls for Stronger Protections
Scrutiny of all aspects of the live industry from governments and regulators in all major touring markets is nevertheless steadily growing.
Last year, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said that it was “aware of the concerns” about ticketing companies using dynamic pricing and was “monitoring the situation.” Excessive prices imposed “by a dominant company” would be in breach of EU laws, the commission warned at the time.
Prior to July’s U.K. general election, Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer said that, once in power, he would limit the number of tickets individual resellers could sell on resale platforms and give the U.K. competition watchdog greater powers to take “swift” action against services and scalpers who break the rules.
“The lack of transparency in live music overall is increasingly problematic. This is an opportune moment to look at the market overall,” says Adam Webb, campaign manager of consumer organization FanFair Alliance, who backs the government’s promise to examine dynamic pricing.
The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has also welcomed the government’s pledge to strengthen consumer protections around ticket buying and said on Tuesday it is “urgently reviewing recent developments in the ticketing market, including the way dynamic pricing is being used in the primary market.”
“Consumer protection law requires businesses to be fair and transparent in their dealings with consumers, and businesses must give clear and accurate information about the price people have to pay, ” said a CMA spokesperson. “Failure to do so may breach the law.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has refiled its historic anti-trust lawsuit against concert promoter Live Nation, with 10 additional states joining the effort to break up the company more than a decade after its 2010 merger with Ticketmaster.
The Attorneys General for Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Vermont were added to an amended complaint filed in New York’s Southern District on Monday (Aug. 19), bringing the total number of states participating in the lawsuit to 40 total, along with the District of Columbia.
“There is nothing new in the Amended Complaint,” a statement from Live Nation reads. “The lawsuit still won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows. We look forward to sharing more facts as the case progresses.”
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The amended lawsuit re-alleges that Live Nation and Ticketmaster acted like a monopoly and violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by using illegal tactics to expand its concert promotion business and management of amphitheaters. The new complaint also includes new details about how Live Nation allegedly expanded its ticketing business after it merged with Ticketmaster in 2009, including information about the company’s controversial relationship with arena developer and operator Oak View Group (OVG). Founded in 2015 by Tim Leiweke and music manager Irving Azoff, Oak View Group manages nearly 200 venues and relies on Live Nation to bring major tours to its concert facilities, which includes such top U.S. venues as Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, the Moody Center in Austin and UBS Arena in Belmont, N.Y.
As the building manager’s main representative, OVG is supposed to manage the competitive process for selecting a venue’s ticketing contract, but the complaint alleges that OVG is obligated to “advocate for exclusive agreements with Ticketmaster for more than 100 venues Oak View Group manages” — which the lawsuit claims essentially “locks those venues into long-term exclusive Ticketmaster agreements.” The agreement, the government argues, unfairly prevents third-party competitors from entering the ticketing space while compensating OVG with a substantial “incentive payment” from Live Nation plus significant annual payments.
In fairness, OVG’s competitor AEG — which also competes with Live Nation for concert promotion and ticketing — also accepted payments for the buildings it managed under ASM Global, the building management firm it owned with Canadian private equity firm Onex and recently sold to Legends Hospitality.
The revised complaint does not include additional damaging exchanges between Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and potential competitors, or new damaging information that shows the company employing heavy-handed tactics. Instead, it contains more analysis of the concert market following the merger of Live Nation-Ticketmaster. On that front, according to the complaint, “Live Nation’s conduct has harmed fans because they have been left with fewer concerts, have had more limited choices among touring artists, have paid higher ticketing fees, and have experienced a lower-quality ticketing experience than they otherwise would have but for Live Nation’s anticompetitive conduct.”
Ticketmaster announced Wednesday (July 24) that the company is expanding its presence in Africa with the acquisition of Quicket, described in a press release as “a major player in Africa’s general admission event and festival ticketing.” Quicket, which was founded in South Africa in 2011, is known for its self-service platform and event organizer […]
Ticketmaster partnered with Shazam for a deal allowing artists to link to their Ticketmaster-listed events directly in the Shazam app. Through that integration, Shazam users will be able to see where that artist is playing and buy tickets to their show “with just a few clicks” after Shazaming their music, according to a Ticketmaster blog post. The ticketing giant previously announced similar integrations with TikTok and Snapchat.
Fraud detection company Beatdapp Software partnered with Beatport, a digital service that offers high-quality downloads for DJs to use in live sets, in a deal that aims to banish fraudulent activities on Beatport by integrating Beatdapp’s fraud detection technology into the platform. “We launched streaming products under the Beatport and Beatsource brands in 2019, and despite the fact that they have not historically been a target for streaming fraud, suspicious activity has been on the rise in recent months,” said Helen Sartory, chief revenue officer of The Beatport Group, in a statement. “Although our fraud rates still remain half that of the industry average, we rely on accurate streaming data not only to preserve fair compensation to artists and labels, but also for track recommendations and analytics. We are excited to be able to work with Beatdapp to ensure that our data is representative of authentic listener engagement.”
Virgin Music Group announced a “strategic relationship” with Frontier Works, a Japanese animation-related content production company, to release anime music projects. Virgin will provide Frontier Works with access to its music distribution and marketing platform and global team to support Frontier releases worldwide. This includes Virgin’s AI-driven music marketing technology, which filters streaming data “to create dynamic and actionable insights,” as well as “Smart Audience,” an advertising platform that uses “ethical AI” to increase fan engagement and help drive streaming consumption, according to a press release.
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Believe acquired a 25% stake in Global Records, an independent dance music company covering Central and Eastern Europe, and signed a strategic partnership with the label. The acquisition expands Believe and Global Records’ existing relationship, which since 2016 has allowed the latter to ramp up its territorial expansion and catalog development, according to a press release. Global Records’ catalog racked up more than 6 billion streams across all platforms last year alone and has seen more than 20 billion streams to date, the release adds. Global’s roster includes INNA, Minelli, Carla’s Dreams, Antonia and Holy Molly; it has offices in Germany, Romania and the United States.
Artist manager Matt Musacchio‘s Champ Management partnered with Red Light Management in a deal that brings Vincent Mason, Jessie James Decker and Dawson Anderson to the Red Light roster. Kyle Marsh will also join the Red Light team as a day-to-day manager.
ASM Global expanded its reach into Portugal by taking on the operation of two venue spaces located in Lisbon’s LX Factory, which is located inside a converted factory complex in the Alcantara area. ASM Global will additionally manage the venues’ adjacent outdoor bar, terrace and gallery spaces.
Web3 creator platform DRiP acquired limited-edition music platform Vault Music. Both platforms are on the Solana blockchain. Under the deal, all Vault Music drops and users will transition to the DRiP platform. “Vault was our first music partner on DRiP,” said CEO Vibhu Norby in a statement on the acquisition. “They did a phenomenal job harboring musicians from outside of the existing ecosystem, and we’re excited to help them continue that effort.”
ADA Canada signed a global distribution deal with country music label MCM Recordings, which is home to Jess Moskaluke, Charlie Major and The Redhill Valleys.
The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) extended its agreement with the International Copyright Enterprise (ICE) for several more years. According to a press release, the extended deal “will facilitate faster royalty payments to IMRO members for online performances of their works and enhanced usage transparency.” The release claims IMRO’s online revenue saw 30% growth in 2023.
Independent dance music label Armada Music signed a long-term partnership with Amsterdam-based DJ and producer KI/KI and her self-founded label, slash. Armada will work with KI/KI and her team on A&R, label management, distribution and promotion/marketing for upcoming slash releases. The first release under the joint venture is KI/KI’s latest EP, slash 010.
Equity analysts aren’t convinced the U.S. Department of Justice will accomplish its larger goal of separating Live Nation’s concert promotion and ticketing businesses, thereby undoing the controversial merger it allowed in 2010. But if Live Nation and Ticketmaster were to become separate companies, analysts estimate the combined companies would be worth from $85 to $96 per share, based on a handful of reports Billboard has seen.
Live Nation shares were trading around $101 to $102 the day before the lawsuit was announced on May 23. But shares have since traded in the $93 to $94 range, putting the current price at the upper end of analysts’ “sum of the parts” (SOTP) valuations. In the wake of the lawsuit, some analysts have lowered their price targets for Live Nation, and S&P Global downgraded its rating on Live Nation’s debt.
Any good merger creates value greater than the sum of the parts. Live Nation’s business model is a “flywheel” in which one segment (such as concerts) generates value for other segments (ticketing or sponsorship and advertisements). To the company, the flywheel is the result of hard-won competitive advantages built over the past 14 years. To the DOJ, the flywheel represents Live Nation’s ability to use its dominant market position to its advantage in anti-competitive ways.
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Breaking up Live Nation would eliminate the synergies that create value for the combined company. What is currently one stock would become two stocks of two separate companies with different management teams. Live Nation shareholders would likely get ownership in the new, standalone Ticketmaster. Analysts have calculated the value of Live Nation and Ticketmaster using a SOTP approach that combines the value of the business segments as if they were standalone companies.
But analysts have serious doubts the DOJ will succeed in breaking up the company. “Federal Judges…are generally pro-business and we doubt — at least based on [the DOJ’s 128-page] summary — the case is strong enough to either break up Live Nation or for the DOJ to win the lawsuit,” wrote Huber Research analyst Doug Arthur in a Thursday (June 6) note to investors. Similarly, J.P. Morgan sees “a real possibility that [Live Nation] comes out of this a winner” and fends off the DOJ’s ultimate goal of breaking up the company, analysts wrote in a May 29 note to investors.
“The government’s burden is going to be pretty high,” Bill Morrison, partner at Haynes & Boone, tells Billboard. “It’s long been the case in antitrust jurisprudence that it’s not illegal to have a monopoly. What’s illegal is to use that monopoly power in an anti-competitive way. And so that would be the burden that the DOJ would have to prove, which is to show that Live Nation abused its monopoly power and it acted unreasonably to restrain trade to maintain its monopoly.”
There could be outcomes other than a forced divestiture, however. Wolfe Research analysts note the “DOJ does not lose if it reached for the stars and landed on the moon,” they wrote in a May 23 note. “From that perspective, it is entirely possible the DOJ wants to get Live Nation/Ticketmaster to agree to remedies, such as eliminating exclusive ticketing deals, and is using the threat of a breakup to achieve those goals.”
The very existence of the DOJ’s lawsuit has changed how investors will approach Live Nation. The health of the concert business and Live Nation’s strengths will be overshadowed by the pall cast by the DOJ. Northcoast Research downgraded Live Nation from “buy” to “neutral” because analysts believe the stock price will be based on legal news and the political environment rather than fundamentals and business performance. J.P. Morgan also noted a “sentiment overhang” related to the DOJ’s lawsuit and lowered its price target to $116 from $126, although it kept its recommendation at “overweight.”
One variable that has largely gone unmentioned is the possible change in the administration at the White House. President Biden has taken an aggressive stance on protecting competition — the DOJ sank proposed mergers by Spirit-JetBlue and Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster — reducing the fees consumers face everywhere from airlines to concert tickets, and criminally prosecuting companies over no-poaching rules and wage-fixing. A second Trump administration would bring an entirely new slate of appointments to head influential antitrust positions. “It depends on who is in those key [regulatory] spots, and then what the priorities are of those offices and the philosophy,” Morrison says. “We’ve seen big pivots in the past.”
Live Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
On Friday (May 31), AEG chairman/CEO Jay Marciano became the first major live music executive to voice support for the Department of Justice’s effort to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, foreshadowing the role AEG will likely play as a key witness in the DOJ’s antitrust case against Ticketmaster.
“AEG has long maintained that Ticketmaster has a monopoly in the U.S. ticketing marketplace and uses that monopoly power to subsidize Live Nation’s content businesses,” Marciano wrote in a memo to staff May 30. Beyond its longstanding criticism that Live Nation uses its scale to overpay for talent, AEG doubled down on its attacks on Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts, with Marciano telling staff that AEG and its attorneys “strongly believe that DOJ’s lawsuit will succeed and ultimately bring sweeping changes” to the live music industry.
The government interviewed dozens of Live Nation’s competitors during its two-year anti-trust investigation, including AEG — executives at AEG have met with DOJ investigators on at least three separate occasions, including a 2023 meeting to discuss the crash of the ticket presale for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which AEG promoted through its joint venture with Louis Messina.
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That puts Marciano and AEG in a rare position to galvanize public opinion and build support for his call to staff and the larger music community to help “us lay the groundwork now for the future of the industry.”
But AEG’s claims aren’t as compelling as Marciano thinks, according to Live Nation executive vp of corporate and regulatory affairs Dan Wall, who responded to Marciano’s May 30 letter with a statement alleging AEG is trying to use Live Nation’s antitrust case “to advance their own interests.”
“AEG supports this case — indeed, begged DOJ to file it — because it doesn’t want to pay artists market rates or convince venues to adopt its second-rate ticketing system exclusively,” Wall said in a statement provided to Billboard after Marciano’s statement was released.
AEG declined to comment for this story.
The battle between Live Nation and AEG dates back to the federal government’s 2010 approval of Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster, which the government approved by imposing a number of conditions on Ticketmaster designed to increase competition. As part of those conditions, referred to as the consent decree, the DOJ required Ticketmaster to license its source code and technology to AEG to create a competing ticketing service. The government did not address some of Ticketmaster’s more controversial tactics at the time, like the use of exclusive contracts to lock venues into long-term deals, which lies at the heart of this current conflict.
AEG only licensed Ticketmaster’s technology for a year, and in 2011 announced it was instead building a new ticketing platform called AXS with the help of Montreal firm Outbox ticketing. It took two years to switch all of AEG’s venues globally to AXS Tickets, and then AEG struggled to sign on new clients, even after merging with Veritix in 2015, and in 2019 ended up losing a major client — Altitude Sports and Entertainment — to a startup called Rival launched by former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard.
AXS’ struggles were due in part to its ownership structure following the 2015 merger with Veritix, which divided ownership among AEG, private-equity firm TPG and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who previously owned Veritix. In 2019, AXS’ partners began exploring a sale of the company and looked at buying Rival or being bought by Rival, deals AEG blocked thanks to AXS’ ownership rules that required unanimous consent for all material decisions. AEG also blocked a merger between AXS and CTS Eventim, a powerful European ticketing provider that was looking for an entry point in the U.S. market to compete with Ticketmaster.
Gilbert and TPG eventually agreed to sell their stakes in AXS to AEG in 2019, which by then had started to explore a new business model for the ticketer, built around non-exclusive ticketing contracts. Instead of competing with Ticketmaster to sign venues to AXS, AEG would instead focus on expanding its use of AXS ticketing for AEG-promoted tours. Both Live Nation and AEG prefer to use their own ticketing platforms for the concerts they promote because it allows the promoters to directly control the customer data.
Hoping to encourage Ticketmaster to allow AEG to use AXS whenever it brought tours to buildings ticketed by Ticketmaster, AEG offered to allow Live Nation to use Ticketmaster at the venues AEG controls, including the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
AEG would extract a similar concession from Live Nation in 2021 that would earn a mention in the DOJ’s lawsuit against Ticketmaster. On June 15 of that year, leading venue operations company ASM Global, in which AEG owned a minority stake, announced it had renewed its agreement with Ticketmaster to provide ticketing services for a majority of the 300 venues ASM manages.
The government flagged the agreement as suspicious because AEG at the time owned 30% of ASM and had “advocated for AXS to serve as the exclusive primary ticketer for the ASM Global venues,” the complaint reads. “But ASM Global’s majority shareholder, Onex, worried that Live Nation would retaliate by withholding shows from ASM Global venues if ASM Global entirely switched away from using Ticketmaster.”
A source close to the deal called the DOJ’s version of the story an “oversimplification,” noting that AEG and Onex didn’t have the right to require ASM Global clients to use one ticketing system over the other and that the majority of clients opted to stay with Live Nation. ASM did, however, convince Live Nation to grant a rare exception to its venue contracts, allowing ASM venues contracted to Ticketmaster to switch to AXS tickets for any tours AEG brought to the buildings.
In exchange, Ticketmaster paid a large advance for the multiyear contract and issued a press release, quoting ASM Global president/CEO Ron Bension saying, “Aligning with industry leaders like Ticketmaster is a critical component in providing millions of people with the most seamless and secure live experiences.”
Happy to have secured the largest carve-out in Ticketmaster’s exclusivity contract to date, AXS decided to push for more exceptions. In 2022, AEG began routing Swift’s The Eras Tour alongside its partner, Messina Touring Group. The majority of the venues on the tour were Ticketmaster-exclusive facilities, though ASM managed five of the stadiums, representing 12 shows on the 52-date trek. But two of those dates — a pair of concerts at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. — would be ticketed by SeatGeek under its exclusive deal with the Arizona Cardinals. Making matters worse, two of ASM’s management clients decided to partner with Ticketmaster for the sale.
Down to just five shows at two stadiums, AEG dropped the matter, but not before reporting the issue to the DOJ, encouraging them to look at Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive contracts as anti-competitive.
After the fiasco, Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei appeared on CNBC to defend Ticketmaster and claim “AEG, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” he said. “Even our competitors want to come on our platform.” AEG leadership was quick to respond. “Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on The Eras Tour required us to ticket through their system,” the leadership said in a statement, adding, “We didn’t have a choice.”
In the months following, AEG’s relationship with Live Nation only worsened. In January 2023, AEG announced it was backing a U.S. tour for chart-topping singer Zach Bryan who had just released a live album called All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster. The album title succinctly encapsulated decades of anti-Ticketmaster sentiment from music fans over Ticketmaster fees, pricing and indignities and AEG was eager to get in early. With AEG as his promoter, Bryan embarked on an expansive tour of non-Ticketmaster buildings, a gambit that hadn’t been attempted since Pearl Jam in the 1990s. AEG even deployed a sophisticated anti-scalping system to keep tickets out of the hands of scalpers.
Despite the tour’s success, Bryan had reached a surprising conclusion about the experience — some of his homies hated AXS tickets too.
“Everyone complained about AXS last year. Using all ticketing sites this year,” he said of his 2023 Quittin’ Time Tour, which was still being promoted by AEG but would no longer route around Ticketmaster buildings and would play all venues, regardless of which company was the ticketer.
“All my homies still do hate Ticketmaster, but hard to realize one guy can’t change the whole system,” Bryan wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “It is intentionally broken and I’ll continue to feel absolutely horrible about the cost of tickets.”
In his written response to Marciano’s letter, Wall, a former litigator for Live Nation who helped architect the 2010 consent decree, says AEG is now trying to use the legal system to compete against Ticketmaster instead of focusing on improving AXS.
Marciano contends that there are many things that the DOJ can do to level the playing field and ended his letter by encouraging his employees not to “get distracted by Live Nation spin” and instead to “prepare for a world with more competition, more innovation, artist and consumer choice, lower ticketing fees, and more music.”
Live music experts are anticipating the antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against Live Nation to take years to resolve, given the wide scope of the claims against the concert giant and the various stakeholders in the live music ecosystem.
“It is going to take a couple of years, at least,” Lee Hepner, senior counsel of anti-monopoly group the American Economic Liberties Project, said at the NIVA 2024 conference in New Orleans on Tuesday (June 4). The conference is put on by the National Independent Venue Association, which formed in 2020 to secure federal funding from the government during the pandemic. The upside, for Hepner and other speakers on the panel called Ticket Tyranny: The Unseen Grip of Market Dominance, is the “massive potential in restructuring the industry.”
Ant Taylor, founder and CEO of ticketing competitor Lyte, agreed on Tuesday saying, “Given how big the scope [of the DOJ lawsuit] is, it is going to be challenging to see it through… What excites me about this moment is the opportunity we have as an ecosystem to look — not just at Live Nation — but to look at the way we do business together and the conditions in which Live Nation has thrived.”
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Specifically, Taylor added, “What’s the business model of ticketing and why, for 40 years, has there been so little innovation around it?”
Ticketmaster has been a dominate force in the ticketing business for decades — its 2010 merger with Live Nation only strengthened its position in the U.S. market. The DOJ lawsuit claims that Live Nation-Ticketmaster has “unlawfully maintained monopolies in several concert promotions and primary ticketing markets and engaged in other exclusionary conduct affecting live concert venues, including arenas and amphitheaters.” A major concern for the DOJ and the group of 30 states that jointly filed the suit on May 23 is Live Nation’s “flywheel model,” which the DOJ describes as a “self-reinforcing business model that captures fees and revenue from concert fans and sponsorship, uses that revenue to lock up artists to exclusive promotion deals, and then uses its powerful cache of live content to sign venues into long term exclusive ticketing deals, thereby starting the cycle all over again.”
Unlike the consent decree that Live Nation has been under since the merger, which was designed to prevent the company from abusing its position, Kevin Erickson, director of Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization Future of Music Coalition, told the audience that he believes the DOJ lawsuit is focusing on the correct parties impacted by the alleged monopoly: the artists, venues and fans.
“Even with the best intentions, a consent decree is inadequate to address the potential for harm,” Erickson said. “It shifts the enforcement burden onto the people who have the least amount of power. It forces artists and artist representatives and venue folks to monitor for violations of antitrust law.”
Hepner explained that Future of Music Coalition has been collecting such complaints against Live Nation for years and encouraged those in the room to reach out on how to connect with the DOJ with additional complaints as the lawsuit works its way through the justice system.
If the DOJ’s lawsuit is successful and Live Nation is forced to divest Ticketmaster, the panelists expressed hope that without the promoter’s financial backing, competition in ticketing will flourish, allow for innovation and end exclusive ticketing contracts often used by Ticketmaster and other major ticketers.
Panelist Gary Witt, president and CEO of Pabst Theater Group, stressed the importance of eliminating Ticketmaster’s dominance due to growing customer dissatisfaction. “It is not about your experience when the customer comes through the door. It is not about the artist’s experience when they come backstage. It’s about the initial experience of buying a ticket,” Witt said to the audience.
The primary ticketing market has become “a closed market and allows for zero innovation,” Witt said, adding, “We have an industry to save here.”
Earlier this week, hackers on a “dark web” site claimed to have stolen data from hundreds of millions of Ticketmaster user accounts — but a source with knowledge of the investigation into the attack says there is no evidence that Ticketmaster fan accounts were compromised or that private user data was stolen.
Officials at Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, acknowledged a breach Friday (May 31) in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, noting it had identified “unauthorized activity within a third-party cloud database environment containing Company data (primarily from its Ticketmaster L.L.C. subsidiary) and launched an investigation with industry-leading forensic investigators to understand what happened.”
The statement noted that the company was “cooperating with law enforcement” and that “as of the date of this filing, the incident has not had, and we do not believe it is reasonably likely to have, a material impact on our overall business operations or on our financial condition or results of operations.”
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According to the source, federal authorities are currently working to understand how a “dark web” site seized by the federal government was recaptured on Monday (May 27) by hackers with the group ShinyHunters and used to ransom 1.3 terabytes of private data allegedly stolen from Ticketmaster for $500,000. Investigators aren’t sure what, if any, Ticketmaster files are being held in the 1.3 terabyte file, the source adds.
The hack, the source tells Billboard, did not involve a breach of the core Ticketmaster system. Rather, company officials are looking at cloud hosting service Snowflake as a possible site of the hack. A hacker claiming to be involved in the attack told the website Bleeping Computer that they had breached Santander Bank and Ticketmaster after hacking into an employee’s account at Snowflake, which provides cloud hosting services for major companies. According to that report, Snowflake is disputing the claim. Billboard independently confirmed that Ticketmaster uses Snowflake’s cloud hosting service.
When reached for comment, Live Nation directed Billboard back to the SEC filing. Snowflake did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Australian ticketing firm Ticketek also reported Friday that it had fallen victim to hackers, notifying customers that the names of some of its users, as well as their dates of birth and email addresses, may have been accessed in a data breach. In a statement on its site, Ticketet said the user information had been stored in a cloud-based platform hosted by a “reputable, global third-party supplier”.
“Ticketek has secure encryption methods in place for all passwords and no Ticketek customer account has been compromised,” company officials said in a statement. “Additionally, Ticketek utilises secure encryption methods for online payments and uses a separate system to process online payments, which has not been impacted. Ticketek does not hold identity documents for its customers.”
A well-known hacking group claims to have breached Ticketmaster and is attempting to sell the personal data of 560 million Ticketmaster users, including their payment details, for $500,000, according to the website Hackread.
Alleged hacking group ShinyHunters has claimed credit for the break-in, resulting in the theft of 1.3 terabytes of stolen data that includes usernames, contact information, order info and partial payment details, like the last four digits of a customer’s credit card, expiration dates and even details designed to prevent fraud (i.e. mother’s maiden name).
Officials with Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, have not responded to requests for comment from Billboard or confirmed that the breach took place, but Australian officials with the country’s Department of Home Affairs told the Australian Broadcasting Company that it was aware of a cyber incident that was part of a data leak expected to impact millions of Ticketmaster customers globally.
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A spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs told the ABC that the department is “working with Ticketmaster to understand the incident”.
“The data breach, if confirmed, could have severe implications for the affected users, leading to potential identity theft, financial fraud, and further cyber attacks,” the Hackread site explains. “The hacker group’s bold move to put this data on sale goes on to show the growing menace of cybercrime and the increasing sophistication of these cyber adversaries.”
The hack comes as Ticketmaster and Live Nation face attempts by the federal government to break the company up on antitrust grounds. Last week, the Department of Justice’s antitrust division sued Ticketmaster in New York’s Southern District, alleging that the company acted monopolistically. Company officials have vowed to fight the lawsuit.
ShinyHunters emerged on law enforcement’s radar in 2020 and has been linked to breaches affecting more than 60 companies. The group is known to use dark web forums to threaten to leak sensitive consumer information unless the affected companies pay an online ransom. Most breaches are carried out using sophisticated phishing pages that mimic their target’s login portals, tricking employees into entering account credentials and other sensitive data. Members of ShinyHunters then use the stolen credentials to log in to company systems and steal data and customer information.
In January, a U.S. District Court in Seattle sentenced alleged ShinyHunters member Sebastien Raoult to three years in prison and restitution of $5 million after Raoult pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The 22-year-old French national was arrested in Morocco in 2022 and extradited to the United States in January 2023.
ShinyHunters is reportedly selling the Ticketmaster data on Breach Forums, an illegal marketplace that just two weeks ago had been seized by the FBI.
On May 13, FBI officials apprehended the site’s administrator and seized access to login credentials for the entire infrastructure of Breach Forums, including the backend, across its dark web and clear web sites.
“From June 2023 until May 2024, BreachForums was operating as a clearnet marketplace for cybercriminals to buy, sell, and trade contraband, including stolen access devices, means of identification, hacking tools, breached databases, and other illegal services,” FBI official said in a statement at the time.
But several days later, ShinyHunters allegedly contacted the domain registrar of Breach Forums and successfully regained access, according to Hack News, with the FBI seizure notice on the site replaced by a “Site Temporarily Unavailable” message. Earlier today, Breach Forums was updated again, this time with the alleged stolen Ticketmaster data posted on the site for sale.