Today the Department of Justice announced that they will settle with Live Nation
and Ticketmaster and allow them to proceed with their merger, as long as they
agree to tough new conditions to protect competition in the ticket selling
marketplace.
While we are disappointed that they did not go to court to
block the merger outright, we acknowledge that the decision, if properly
enforced, could prevent the merged company from having a complete monopoly. The
most important of those conditions include:
1) Live Nation Entertainment must license their ticket software to concert promoter AEG, who
will be able to use their software for a fee. This will increase competition in the ticket vending industry and hopefully induce Live Nation Entertainment to be more
responsive to their customers.
2) Live Nation Entertainment must sell one of their
subsidiaries, Paciolan, to Comcast-Spectacor, who will now directly compete with the new
Live Nation Entertainment corporation in ticket sales.
3) Live Nation Entertainment will be under a 10-year court
order prohibiting them from taking retaliatory steps against venues who choose
to use other ticket agencies.
While Live Nation Entertainment will continue to be
undeniably powerful in the concert industry, the settlement creates far more
enforcement tools to put an end to their worst anti-competitive practices.
Now the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission must
aggressively use those tools to ensure anti-consumer practices are stopped and
competition on the marketplace is protected.
CALPIRG activists sent over 3,000 messages to the Department
of Justice, complaining about Ticketmaster’s fees and practices and urging the
DOJ to prevent the merger. We strongly urge the FTC and DOJ to keep a close eye
on the corporation going forward, and respond quickly to ongoing customer
problems with the industry.
