After fans experienced immense trouble when attempting to buy tickets on Ticketmaster to Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour, the United States Department of Justice is opening an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment. According to The New York Times, the investigation is focused on “whether Live Nation Entertainment has abused its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry.”
Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010, creating Live Nation Entertainment. The Justice Department accepted the merger under the conditions that Ticketmaster sold another ticketing company it owned to a rival firm and licensed its ticketing software to another rival, Anschutz Entertainment Group. In 2019, the Justice Department modified their agreement after finding out the company violated the original deal terms.
It is reported that the decision to open this investigation was made before the issues with the Eras Tour tickets. On Tuesday, during Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan pre-sale, meant to keep out bots and help real fans get tickets, the website was crashing, causing people to be kicked out of the queue, even after waiting for hours. As a result, Ticketmaster canceled the public on-sale, set to take place on Friday, November 18. (Pitchfork)
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