Photo Credit: Live Nation
Pre-sale tickets for Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s ‘Grand National Tour’ started yesterday, but fans aren’t happy. When are they ever? Ticketmaster does everything it can to make the process as painful as possible. Here’s a peek at some of the problems surfacing on social media.
Fans complain about long wait times, queues, and outrageous service fees tacked on to the tickets. “You will let the brokers in with good accounts due to your algorithm [and let them] get all the good or cheap tickets,” alleges one post on X/Twitter complaining about the ticket pre-sale process. Perhaps surprisingly, Ticketmaster actually responded to this allegation.
“This is false. We never prioritize brokers over fans,” Ticketmaster told the person. “In fact, we have invested more than the rest of the industry combined in developing technology to block bad actors from stealing tickets from fans.” (Sidenote: that doesn’t include a robust 2FA system to prevent tickets from being stolen out of fans accounts after purchase—better have a strong password!)
“Nosebleed tickets for Kendrick and SZA are $350. Ticketmaster, you will crumble,” reads another complaint about the sales process. “Ticketmaster, you son of a bitch, $60 in fees for a $159 ticket is insane,” reads another complaint.
Both Live Nation and Ticketmaster were sued by the United States Department of Justice over its anticompetitive practices. The DOJ alleges that Ticketmaster operates a monopoly at the cost of “fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators.” The DOJ was joined by several state attorneys general seeking the dissolution of the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger that was allowed in 2010.
In the United States, having a monopoly isn’t unlawful unless the monopoly was obtained by using anti-competitive means and excluding competition. One complaint from the DOJ about Live Nation’s monopolistic practice is entering into exclusive agreements with third-party venues for those venues to only provide ticketing through Ticketmaster.
The DOJ lawsuit also charges Live Nation with monopolizing promotional services. They argue that Live Nation retaliates against companies trying to enter or expand in the promotional space. Live Nation entered into agreements with both artists and venues requiring them to only partner with Live Nation for concert promotion—excluding third-party promoters from using Live Nation venues.
Meanwhile, Digital Music News reported on a former Ticketmaster executive who pleaded guilty to hacking into a major competitor’s platform to obtain real-time information on said competitor. The lawsuit was filed back in 2015 by Songkick, who accuses Live Nation and Ticketmaster of abusing their market power to pressure artists not to work with the company. The former executive kept 85,000 company documents following his departure as General Manager of U.S. Operations for Songkick.
The executive then went to work for TicketWeb, a subsidiary of Ticketmaster. Stephen Mead then began sharing trade secrets with his new employer, providing reports on Songkick’s operations and helping Ticketmaster to refine its own artist platform.
