Featured Image: Lukas Bato on Unsplash
The Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger has continued to face scrutiny this week, following an Antitrust Subcommittee Hearing on Vertical Merger Enforcement in the US.
Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee, Chairwoman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, held a hearing on trends in vertical merger enforcement on Wednesday.
“For too long, I believe there has not been enough attention paid to another kind of merger that can greatly harm consumers: the vertical merger,” said Klobuchar.
“Vertical mergers happen when a company buys a supplier, distributor, or retail locations above or below them in the supply or distribution chain. For years, companies have argued that this kind of vertical integration helps consumers by lowering their costs. But it’s not really the story.”
She added: “Vertical mergers can also allow companies to amass market power and clout that they can use to unfairly leverage power against their competitors. These mergers can also create potential conflicts of interest by incentivising companies to preference their own products over the products of competitors.
“It’s beyond time that we stop ignoring the problems that vertical mergers pose for competition.”
The Senator went on to discuss January’s committee hearing, which was focused on Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with Live Nation and how this partnership has “allowed Ticketmaster to wield power over artists, venues and consumers, which has resulted in high fees and botched ticket sales”.
Klobuchar continued: “Before the merger, Live Nation was primarily a concert promoter. But since acquiring ticketing provider Ticketmaster, Live Nation has used its role as a concert promoter to force venues to sell tickets through its newly acquired platform. This has decimated competition in the ticketing industry, and resulted in higher fees for consumers.
“Unfortunately, this is not a surprising result. At the time of the merger, DOJ [Department of Justice] was so concerned that something like this might happen that it made Live Nation promise not to retaliate against concert venues for using another ticketing company. But guess what? That didn’t work. Live Nation’s conduct created such an issue that in 2019, DOJ reopened the consent decree and strengthened the limits on Live Nation. So that’s one example.”
Elsewhere, Live Nation has insisted that a planned show from rapper Travis Scott in front of the pyramids of Giza in Egypt is still set to go ahead despite reports that it had been cancelled.
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