Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler issued the following statement in response to the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster:

“I commend the Department of Justice for completing a thorough investigation into Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopolistic behavior and initiating necessary antitrust enforcement action,” said Congressman Nadler. “Since its merger in 2010, Live Nation-Ticketmaster has engaged in boldly anti-competitive practices at the expense of consumers, entertainers, venues, and vendors. Instead of cooperating with the terms of its consent decree with the Department of Justice, the company has only grown more brazen in its tactics to corner the primary and secondary ticketing markets. Today’s filing is a significant step toward restoring a fair marketplace for Americans to access live events and protecting the hard-working people who put them on.”

In 2009, when Live Nation and Ticketmaster announced their intention to merge, Rep. Nadler and 50 of his colleagues called on the Department of Justice to scrutinize the deal closely for antitrust violations. In a letter, they warned, “transacting parties, if merged, would be over five times more powerful than their next eight rivals combined… Such scrutiny is critical to ensure that consumers are not harmed by the creation, entrenchment, extension, or undue exploitation of market power in an industry that affects every state, and virtually every congressional district, in the country.”

After the deal was allowed to proceed with a consent decree, Rep. Nadler continued to watch the new entity closely. In April 2021, Reps. Nadler, Pascrell, Cicilline, Schakowsky and Pallone Jr. sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and then-Acting Chair of the FTC Rebecca Slaughter urging the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to reexamine Live Nation-Ticketmaster (LNE). The members had written, “We believe the prior administration’s decision to extend the consent decree in 2019 to 2025 was insufficient to protect consumers. In its decision, DOJ did not demonstrate why extending the consent decree with only minor modifications would prevent LNE from continuing anticompetitive conduct.”

The members had also highlighted specific reported conduct for the agencies’ attention, such as leveraging the company’s position in the primary market to drive out competition in the resale market and blocking competing platforms under the guise of fighting fraud.

The Department complaint, filed today in the Southern District of New York, seeks structural relief to address these issues. 30 state and district attorneys general have also joined the suit.

A full copy of the complaint can be read here.  

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U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler represents New York's 12th Congressional District, which includes parts of Manhattan, and serves as the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee.