Ticketmaster, Live Nation Slammed with Antitrust Class Action in NY As Bad Week Continues

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Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s legal troubles continue to swell, with a new proposed class action lawsuit claiming that the embattled companies’ practice of double dipping in the event ticket market is a violation of federal antitrust laws.

The seven-page lawsuit, filed in New York’s Northern District, centers on recent revelations that Live Nation and Ticketmaster decry scalpers who use dubious methods to snatch up prime event tickets in bulk before reselling them at inflated prices while at the same time reaping sizable profits by operating a ticket reselling platform that caters to these same scalpers. According to the case, the defendants, who control roughly 80 percent of event tickets sold in the United States, have engaged in monopolistic behavior by willfully ignoring third parties who violate the companies’ ticket resale limits.

“The third-parties then use Ticketmaster’s proprietary and exclusive ticket reselling platform to offer the tickets for sale in the secondary market – websites and apps such as StubHub,” the complaint reads. “The result is that eventgoers are forced to pay an artificially elevated price beyond the original face value of the ticket.”

Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s competition-suppressing behavior has forced consumers to pay supra-competitive prices for event tickets that would reach nowhere near such levels without market manipulation, the suit claims.