According to Live Nation Entertainment CFO Joe Berchtold, Ticketmaster was the victim of a cyberattack in November when customers seeking to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour experienced website disruptions and longer wait times.
After Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, there has been a “lack of competition in the ticketing market,” according to Berchtold. He made the comments during an inquiry titled “That’s the Ticket; Promoting Competition and Protecting Customers In Live Entertainment.”
Live Nation Entertainment was created as a result of the merger of event promotion business Live Nation and ticketing company Ticketmaster.
The subcommittee on competition policy, antitrust, and consumer rights’ chairwoman and ranking member, senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mike Lee of Utah, requested a hearing after Ticketmaster’s website crashed as pre-sale tickets for Taylor Swift’s tour went on sale.
With regard to the ticket debacle, Berchtold said, “In retrospect, there are a number of things we could have done better.” “Although the bots were unable to access our systems or purchase any tickets, the attack forced us to suspend or even slow down our sales. This is what contributed to the poor customer experience.
Klobuchar said the Swift incident made problems in the American ticketing sector “painfully clear” in a statement announcing the hearing.
In a tribute to Taylor Swift, I’ll say it this way: “I believe in capitalism, and to have a good capitalist system, you have to have competition, you can’t have too much consolidation, something that sadly for this country, we know ‘all too well.'” During the hearing’s opening remarks on Tuesday, Klobuchar stated.
The merger was given the go-ahead by antitrust authorities in 2010, but the Department of Justice later discovered that the businesses had been unfairly requiring venues to utilize Ticketmaster to book Live Nation performances.
In his opening remarks, Lee said, “Here we are over 13 years later, presented with a flotilla of charges and complaints that the merged business has done exactly what it said would never happen.”
Berchtold refuted allegations that Ticketmaster was to blame for outrageous resale pricing by stating that the corporation “did not set prices.” However, Klobuchar said that the business continued to wield excessive influence over ticketing and live event venues.
Today, Live Nation not only controls the ticketing industry (about 70% of the big concert market), but also many of the major venues. For the venues they don’t own, they frequently sign three-, five-, or seven-year contracts, making it impossible for their rivals to compete with them in the ticketing market.
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