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Friday 27 October 2023

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McFly announce “21st birthday show” at The O2 in London

"We don’t take it for granted that after all this time people still want to hear new music from us and come to see us play live"

McFly have announced a 21st anniversary show taking place at the O2 in London this October.

• READ MORE: The five most wholesome moments from McFly’s set at Glastonbury

More than two decades since the pop-rock boyband formed, the group are celebrating their “21st birthday” with a special show on October 10, where they’re set to play hits and fan favourites from across their career.

The O2 is the latest addition to McFly’s 2024 tour schedule, which also includes outdoor shows and festival dates.

Tickets for the show go on general sale 9am GMT this Friday (February 23), and can be purchased here .

View this post on Instagram A post shared by McFly (@mcflymusic)

“It’s crazy to think that it has been 21 years since McFly was formed and we all moved into a house together!” said Harry Judd in a press statement.

“We don’t take it for granted that after all this time people still want to hear new music from us and come to see us play live. As a band we’re always looking forward at what’s next, but this show will be a fun opportunity to reflect on our career so far. And what better place to throw a 21st birthday party than at The O2!”

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McFly have become best known for their hits over the years like ‘All About You’, ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’ and ‘Obviously’.

A more recent career highlight for the group was their 2022 debut at Glastonbury Festival . Reflecting on the performance, NME wrote: “Today’s appearance is certainly a cause for celebration: for McFly, it’s a moment that has been almost 20 years in the making. From the release of 2004’s ‘Room On The 3rd Floor’ onwards, they’ve layered some irresistible cheese over their playful yet sincere pop-rock, and garnered BRIT Awards along the way – yet an invitation to play at Worthy Farm wasn’t offered for almost two decades.

Vocalist and guitarist Tom Fletcher told NME backstage that it was “a dream ticked off the bucket list”.

Back in October, meanwhile, McFly  brought out Rou Reynolds from   Enter Shikari at their show at London’s Alexandra Palace.

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• Date 9 Oct - 10 Oct 2024
• Venue The O2 arena
• Availability On sale now

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Event Details

McFly have announced that they will celebrate the band's 21 st birthday by playing two very special shows at The O2 on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 October 2024.

It’s been 21 years since McFly first formed, a journey which has taken them from their breakthrough hit ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’ to last year’s full-force rock album ‘Power To Play’. Along the way Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter and Harry Judd have scored seven #1 singles, seven Top 10 albums, 10 million sales, a BRIT Award, sold-out countless arena shows and still remain the youngest band to ever have a debut album go straight to number 1, beating The Beatles.

Harry Judd says, “ It’s crazy to think that it has been 21 years since McFly was formed and we all moved into a house together! We don’t take it for granted that after all this time people still want to hear new music from us and come to see us play live. As a band we’re always looking forward at what’s next, but this show will be a fun opportunity to reflect on our career so far. And what better place to throw a 21st birthday party than at The O2!”

Now, they prepare to play all their hits and fan favourites from the past twenty-one years for a gig not to be missed by any McFly fans. News of The O2 show adds to McFly’s 2024 tour schedule which also includes big outdoor shows and select festival dates.

Important Information - How to download your tickets on The O2 app

For this show, if you’ve purchased your tickets from theo2.co.uk or AXS.com you’ll need to display your ticket on your phone via The O2 app. Ticket purchasers will receive an email with news and information on  AXS Mobile ID tickets  and how you can download your tickets to your phone. 

If you’ve bought your tickets for this show via AXS then you can re-sell your tickets with AXS Official Resale   which gives you a safe, simple, and fair way to buy and sell tickets.

For more information on re-selling tickets from AXS and other ticket agents  click here .  

Please note:  If you purchase  resale   tickets for this show through any website other than via theo2.co.uk or axs.com, your tickets may not be valid and access to the venue could be refused.

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Wed 21 Aug 2024

BRITISH POP-ROCK BAND MCFLY TO HEADLINE CONCERT AT CARDIFF BAY 

Mcfly return to Cardiff for a very special show on Wednesday 21st August 2024 with special guest Sam Ryder plus more to be announced.

With seven UK number-one singles, seven top-ten albums (including 2023’s Power to Play), numerous awards including a BRIT for Best Pop Act, sold out arena tours and over ten million records sold worldwide, McFly are without question one of the most significant British acts of the twenty-first century. Since forming in 2003 and becoming the youngest band ever to have a debut album go straight to number one – beat The Beatles’ long-standing record – Tom, Danny, Dougie & Harry have become one of our best-loved bands, not to mention major stars in their own right.

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McFly add summer dates to 2020 live shows

Tom, Danny, Dougie and Harry add five outdoor shows to 2020 run.

Find tickets here

Following the news that they’ll perform at The O2, London this November, and a string of arena shows in April and May 2020, McFly have now announced details of five outdoor summer shows.

The five new dates will see them take to Bath, Inverness, Taunton, Scarborough and Newmarket.

Here are those newly announced dates:

23 May 2020 – Festival Finale at Bath Recreation Ground, Bath 5 July 2020 – Bught Park, Inverness 10 July 2020 – Vivary Park, Taunton 29 August 2020 – Racecourse, Newmarket

Consisting of Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter and Harry Judd, McFly first broke through in 2004 with their debut album Room on the 3rd Floor. 

The record peaked at No.1 on the Official UK Albums Chart and spawned the hit singles 5 Colours In Her Hair, Obviously, That Girl and Room On The 3rd Floor, turning the foursome into pop superstars.

Room on the 3rd Floor  was followed by the albums Wonderland, Motion in the Ocean, Radio:ACTIVE  and  Above the Noise.

The band have a phenomenal 19 top-10 singles to their name including Love Is On The Radio, One For The Radio, Star Girl, I’ll Be OK and arguably their biggest hit to date, All About You. 

After taking an indefinite hiatus the band announced that they would be reforming in 2019 to tour and release new music, with a show at London’s The O2 booked for November.

In the lead up to the concert, the band will be releasing one brand new track a week taken from the sessions recorded in 2011 for their unreleased sixth album.

Here are McFly’s upcoming tour dates:

20 November 2019 – The O2, London

26 April 2020 – M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool 27 April 2020 – Utilita Arena, Newcastle 29 April 2020 – The SSE Hydro, Glasgow 1 May 2020 – Manchester Arena 2 May 2020 – First Direct Arena, Leeds 4 May 2020 – Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff 5 May 2020 – Bournemouth International Centre 6 May 2020 – Brighton Centre 8 May 2020 – The SSE Arena Wembley, London 9 May 2020 – Resorts World Arena, Birmingham 10 May 2020 – Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham

23 May 2020 – Festival Finale at Bath Recreation Ground, Bath 5 July 2020 – Bught Park, Inverness 10 July 2020 – Vivary Park, Taunton 14 August 2020 – Open Air Theatre, Scarborough 29 August 2020 – Racecourse, Newmarket

Tickets for McFly’s newly announced outdoor summer dates will be available from Friday 15 November 2019. Any remaining tickets for all other dates are available now. Grab all through Ticketmaster.co.uk  

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Justice Department Sues Live Nation-Ticketmaster for Monopolizing Markets Across the Live Concert Industry

The Justice Department, along with 30 state and district attorneys general, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Ticketmaster LLC (Live Nation-Ticketmaster) for monopolization and other unlawful conduct that thwarts competition in markets across the live entertainment industry. The lawsuit, which includes a request for structural relief, seeks to restore competition in the live concert industry, provide better choices at lower prices for fans, and open venue doors for working musicians and other performance artists.

The complaint, filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that Live Nation-Ticketmaster unlawfully exercises its monopoly power in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. As a result of its conduct, music fans in the United States are deprived of ticketing innovation and forced to use outdated technology while paying more for tickets than fans in other countries. At the same time, Live Nation-Ticketmaster exercises its power over performers, venues, and independent promoters in ways that harm competition. Live Nation-Ticketmaster also imposes barriers to competition that limit the entry and expansion of its rivals.

“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”

“Today’s announcement reflects the latest efforts by the Justice Department to combat corporate misconduct,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “Our fight against corporate wrongdoing includes an intense focus on anticompetitive conduct — which disadvantages consumers, workers, and businesses of all kinds. Today’s complaint alleges that Live Nation-Ticketmaster have engaged in anticompetitive conduct to cement their dominance of the live concert market and act as the gatekeeper for an entire industry. Today’s action is a step forward in making this era of live music more accessible for the fans, the artists, and the industry that supports them.”

“The Department is committed to competition throughout the economy, including in live music,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer. “As our complaint alleges, Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopolizes the markets for concerts and other live events at the expense of fans, venues, and artists across the country. The Department is proud to bring this case to restore competition to this industry.”

“The live music industry in America is broken because Live Nation-Ticketmaster has an illegal monopoly,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Our antitrust lawsuit seeks to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopoly and restore competition for the benefit of fans and artists.”

According to the complaint, Live Nation-Ticketmaster has unlawfully maintained monopolies in several concert promotions and primary ticketing markets and engaged in other exclusionary conduct affecting live concert venues, including arenas and amphitheaters. The complaint further alleges that Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s exclusionary practices fortify and protect what it refers to as its “flywheel.” The flywheel is Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s self-reinforcing business model that captures fees and revenue from concert fans and sponsorship, uses that revenue to lock up artists to exclusive promotion deals, and then uses its powerful cache of live content to sign venues into long term exclusive ticketing deals, thereby starting the cycle all over again. Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive conduct creates even more barriers for rivals to compete on the merits. Specifically, Live Nation-Ticketmaster engaged in a variety of tactics to eliminate competition and monopolize markets:

• Relationship with Oak View Group: Live Nation-Ticketmaster exploits its longtime relationship with Oak View Group, a potential competitor-turned-partner that has described itself as a “hammer” and “protect[or]” for Live Nation. In recent years, Oak View Group has avoided bidding against Live Nation for artist talent and influenced venues to sign exclusive agreements with Ticketmaster. For example, Live Nation has scolded Oak View Group multiple times for trying to compete. In one instance, Live Nation asked, “who would be so stupid to . . . play into [an artist agent’s] arms,” and on another occasion, Live Nation stated, “let’s make sure we don’t let [the artist agency] now start playing us off.”
• Retaliating Against Potential Entrants: Live Nation-Ticketmaster successfully threatened financial retaliation against a firm unless it stopped one of its subsidiaries from competing to gain a foothold in the U.S. concert promotions market.
• Threatening and Retaliating Against Venues that Work with Rivals: Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s power in concert promotions means that every live concert venue knows choosing another promoter or ticketer comes with a risk of drawing an adverse reaction from Live Nation-Ticketmaster that would result in losing concerts, revenue, and fans.
• Locking Out Competition with Exclusionary Contracts: Live Nation-Ticketmaster locks concert venues into long-term exclusive contracts so that venues cannot consider or choose rival ticketers or switch to better or more cost-effective ticketing technology. These contracts allow Live Nation-Ticketmaster to reduce competitive pressure to improve its own ticketing technology and customer service.
• Blocking Venues from Using Multiple Ticketers: Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s conduct and exclusive contracts prevent new and different promotions and ticketing competitors and business models from emerging. They block venues from being able to use multiple ticketers, who would compete by offering the best mix of prices, fees, quality, and innovation to fans.
• Restricting Artists’ Access to Venues: Live Nation-Ticketmaster has increasingly gained control of key venues, including amphitheaters, through acquisitions, partnerships, and agreements. Live Nation-Ticketmaster restricts artists’ use of those venues unless those artists also agree to use their promotion services.
• Acquiring Competitors and Competitive Threats: Live Nation-Ticketmaster strategically acquired a number of smaller and regional promoters that it had internally identified as threats. This has undermined competition and impacted artist compensation.

Live Nation Entertainment Inc. is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. It describes itself as the “largest live entertainment company in the world,” the “largest producer of live music concerts in the world,” and “the world’s leading live entertainment ticketing sales and marketing company.” Live Nation also owns or controls more than 265 concert venues in North America, including more than 60 of the top 100 amphitheaters in the United States. It generates over $22 billion globally in annual revenue from three business segments: concerts (e.g., promotions, venue management, and music festival production), ticketing (e.g., Ticketmaster business), and sponsorship and advertising.

Ticketmaster LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Live Nation. It is a Virginia limited liability company with headquarters in Beverly Hills. Ticketmaster sells concert tickets to fans when those tickets first go on sale and operates resale platforms that enable purchasers to resell those tickets at a later time. Ticketmaster is by far the largest concert ticketing company in the United States, multiple times the size of its closest competitor.

View the complaint.

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‘It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster’: Justice Department sues concert ticket behemoth

Anastasia Tsioulcas

Live Nation sued by Justice Department

Penny Harrison and her son Parker Harrison rally against the live entertainment ticket industry outside the U.S. Capitol last year. Drew Angerer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America hide caption

The Department of Justice and 30 state and district attorneys general across the country filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against Live Nation Entertainment and its wholly owned subsidiary Ticketmaster. The suit alleges that Live Nation has created a monopoly on live event ticket prices across the United States. The civil antitrust suit was filed in the Southern District of New York.

This fight has been long in coming: Music fans and other consumers, performers, independent venues and even members of Congress have argued that Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation in 2010, had artificially pushed ticket prices sky-high. Live Nation has long been a dominant player in the live event marketplace, with substantial holdings in venues, concert promotions, music festivals, ticketing, sponsorship, advertising and artist management – holding so much power across so many aspects of the business, the Justice Department alleges, that it is effectively able to limit its competition.

If successful, this suit could reshape the live event landscape – and the prices fans pay to see their favorite performers – across the country.

The state and district attorneys general joining the suit include several states that are home to major live event venues, including those of New York, California, Colorado, Florida and Texas.

In a lengthy statement provided to NPR on Thursday, Live Nation wrote in part: “The DOJ’s lawsuit won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows. Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment, such as the fact that the bulk of service fees got to venues, and that competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margin.”

Within the suit, the Department of Justice and the states allege that Live Nation and Ticketmaster engaged in several forms of anticompetitive conduct, including retaliating against other promotion companies and venues that worked with its rivals; locking out competitors with long-term, exclusive ticketing contracts; restricting musicians’ access to live event venues; and strategically acquiring smaller, independent companies that Live Nation allegedly perceived as threats to its dominance.

Earlier this month, in a bid to increase transparency for consumers, the House of Representatives passed the TICKET Act, which would force Live Nation and other ticket sellers to list all the costs and fees within a live event ticket price. The bill, which was introduced in the Senate by Ted Cruz of Texas, has been supported by hundreds of prominent musicians, including Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews and Nile Rodgers, who wrote in a joint statement: “We are joining together to say that the current system is broken: predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair price.”

According to Thursday’s filing, Live Nation Entertainment currently owns or controls over 250 concert venues across North America, and controls around 60 percent of concert promotions at major concert venues across the U.S. The company also directly manages more than 400 musical acts.

In the suit, the Department of Justice and the states asserted: “With this vast scope of power comes influence. Live Nation and its wholly owned subsidiary, Ticketmaster, have used that power and influence to insert themselves at the center and the edges of virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem.”

“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement.

In the past, and again in its statement to NPR on Thursday, Live Nation argued that musicians — not its own company — are the ones to ultimately set their own ticket prices. Live Nation executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs Dan Wall said that the suit “ignores everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices, from increasing production costs to artist popularity, to 24/7 online ticket scalping that reveals the public’s willingness to pay far more than [what] primary tickets cost.”

“It is not surprising that Live Nation has pointed its finger at artists,” a senior Justice official said on background on Thursday morning. “In an industry in which artists have historically been squeezed for compensation for their creative work, it’s important that artists are properly compensated.”

“To us, that’s a little bit of a red herring,” the official continued, referring to Live Nation’s previous argument. “How is the system set up? How is Live Nation’s control at all levels of the system allowing for a process that’s distorted in part by Live Nation’s power?”

The DOJ is pressing for “structural relief” – that is, it is asking the federal court to break up the Live Nation-Ticketmaster combined company, which the DOJ itself had approved in the 2010 merger. Justice Department officials are now arguing that since the merger, Live Nation has created a stranglehold on the live event industry.

Thursday’s case is the latest lawsuit by the Biden administration against major corporations that it has accused of abusing monopoly power. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have sued Apple , Google and Amazon . They’ve successfully stopped the mergers of publishers Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster and of JetBlue Airways with Spirit Airlines . They’ve also unraveled a partnership between JetBlue and American Airlines .

Last year, however, federal officials lost their bids to block the merger of Microsoft and videogame giant Activision Blizzard; of Facebook parent Meta with virtual-reality company Within Unlimited; and of insurer UnitedHealth Group with tech firm Change Healthcare.

“While we do not comment on specific enforcement matters, President Biden strongly supports fair and robust enforcement of the antitrust laws," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a statement Thursday. "The President launched the Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing because no American should pay higher prices or lose choices because companies break the law and engage in anti-competitive practices. His Administration has taken action to fight corporate greed by banning hidden junk fees—including event tickets—that unfairly increase prices for hardworking families trying to make ends meet. As the President has said, the American people are tired of being played for suckers.”

The announcement of the federal antitrust suit against Live Nation is just a first step in what will almost certainly be a long court process, so music fans likely won’t encounter lower ticket prices any time soon.

With additional reporting by Alina Selyukh.

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U.S. Plans to Sue Ticketmaster Owner, Accusing It of Defending a Monopoly

Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.

By David McCabe and Ben Sisario

David McCabe reports on tech policy from Washington. Ben Sisario reports on the music industry from New York.

The Justice Department and a group of states plan to sue Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, as soon as Thursday, accusing it of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the live entertainment industry, said three people familiar with the matter.

The government plans to argue in a lawsuit that Live Nation shored up its power through Ticketmaster’s exclusive ticketing contracts with concert venues, as well as the company’s dominance over concert tours and other businesses like venue management, said two of the people, who declined to be named because the lawsuit was still private. That helped the company maintain a monopoly, raising prices and fees for consumers, limiting innovation in the ticket industry and hurting competition, the people said.

The government will argue that tours promoted by the company were more likely to play venues where Ticketmaster was the exclusive ticket service, one of the people said, and that Live Nation’s artists played venues that it owns.

Live Nation is a colossus of the concert world and a force in the lives of musicians and fans alike. Its scale and reach far exceed those of any competitor, encompassing concert promotion, ticketing, artist management and the operation of hundreds of venues and festivals around the world.

The Ticketmaster division alone sells 600 million tickets a year to events around the world. According to some estimates, it handles ticketing for 70 percent to 80 percent of major concert venues in the United States.

Lawmakers, fans and competitors have accused the company of engaging in practices that harm rivals and drive up ticket prices and fees. At a congressional hearing early last year, prompted by a Taylor Swift tour presale on Ticketmaster that left millions of people unable to buy tickets, senators from both parties called Live Nation a monopoly .

The company has denied that it sets high prices and fees, saying artists and other parties like major venues are responsible.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department and a spokeswoman for Live Nation declined to comment. Bloomberg News earlier reported that the lawsuit was imminent. The lawsuit is expected to be filed in the Southern District of New York, two of the people familiar with the matter said.

In recent years, American regulators have sued other major companies, testing century-old antitrust laws against new power wielded by major companies over consumers. The Justice Department sued Apple in March, arguing the company has made it difficult for customers to ditch its devices, and has already brought two cases arguing Google violated antitrust laws. The Federal Trade Commission last year filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon for harming sellers on its platform and is pursuing another against Meta , in part for its acquisitions of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

The Justice Department allowed Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, to buy Ticketmaster in 2010 under certain conditions laid out in a legal agreement. If venues did not use Ticketmaster, for example, Live Nation could not threaten to pull concert tours.

In 2019, however, the Justice Department found that Live Nation had violated those terms and modified and extended the agreement.

The Justice Department’s latest investigation of Live Nation began in 2022. Live Nation simultaneously ramped up its lobbying efforts, spending $2.4 million on federal lobbying in 2023, up from $1.1 million in 2022, according to filings available through the nonpartisan website OpenSecrets.

In April, the company co-hosted a lavish party in Washington ahead of the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that featured a performance by the country singer Jelly Roll and cocktail napkins that displayed positive facts about Live Nation’s impact on the economy, like the billions it says it pays to artists.

Under pressure from the White House, Live Nation said in June that it would begin to show prices for shows at venues it owned that included all charges, including extra fees. The Federal Trade Commission has proposed a rule that would ban hidden fees.

A former chairman of the commission, Bill Kovacic, said Wednesday that a lawsuit against the company would be a rebuke of earlier antitrust officials who had allowed the company to grow to its current size.

“It’s another way of saying earlier policy failed and failed badly,” he said.

David McCabe covers tech policy. He joined The Times from Axios in 2019. More about David McCabe

Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario

Inside the Biden Administration

Here’s the latest news and analysis from washington..

War in Ukraine:  President Biden barred Ukraine from firing U.S. weapons into Russia to “avoid World War III.” After a sobering trip to Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken wants to ease that rule .

Live Nation:  The Justice Department is suing Live Nation Entertainment , the owner of Ticketmaster, asking a court to break up the company over claims it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry.

Relations With Kenya:  During the Kenyan president’s state visit , Biden will designate the East African nation as a “major non-NATO ally.”

Hidden Fees:  Biden’s effort to crack down on “junk fees”  from airlines and credit-card companies is doubling as a war against inflation.

Student Loans:  Biden announced the cancellation of another $7.7 billion in student loans , building on his strategy of chipping away at college debt by tweaking existing programs.

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The Ugly Truth Behind Ticketmaster’s Lawsuit

Ticket fees are the least of why ticketmaster and live nation are finally getting sued by the u.s..

The waters were chummed. Thanks to a fiasco around Taylor Swift ticket sales in late 2022, few companies have seen their predatory business practices get as bright a limelight as the one that has shone on Ticketmaster and its parent, Live Nation Entertainment. Swift’s fans had a disastrous couple of days trying to buy tickets to the Eras Tour, and the relatively few who succeeded paid exorbitant, ticky-tack fees. A congressional hearing followed. Senators from both parties gave Live Nation the Big Tobacco hearing treatment. One of Ticketmaster’s biggest rivals told lawmakers to break the giant up .

We’ll never know if Thursday’s 124-page Justice Department lawsuit against Live Nation, alleging all manner of antitrust violations, would have come about now if not for the Swift mess. We’ll especially not know if 30 state attorneys general, including a handful of Republicans, would’ve joined the suit if countless pop music fans in their states weren’t driven to rage by a high-profile moment of ticketing incompetence. But one of the striking things about the lawsuit, which calls explicitly for the breakup of Live Nation and separation of its Ticketmaster business from its other revenue lines, is that a CTRL-F through the document says nothing about the Taylor moment.

The feds’ case against Live Nation isn’t really about all the bullshit that Ticketmaster puts fans through when they want to take in a concert. To be clear, it has plenty of time for that. But this lawsuit fits with a recent Justice Department tradition of not just going after anti-competitive businesses but doing so on behalf of a much more sprawling group of stakeholders than just consumers. The message of the lawsuit is that, yes, music fans get a bad deal because of Ticketmaster’s dominance in the ticketing space, but Live Nation’s most corrosive impact is on the events world as a whole, poison not just to fans but to venues, artists, and promoters too. And the only tonic, according to the feds, is to stop letting Live Nation be so many things at once.

The history of American antitrust laws is long, but it is fair to say that these laws are traditionally used to protect “consumers, taxpayers, and workers.” Do not take my word for it, but take the Justice Department’s when it describes the effect of antitrust law in exactly those terms . The government doesn’t want companies to be insulated from competition, whether by colluding to keep prices high or to keep wages low. Americans get more innovative products for less money. Workers make better wages. That’s the point and the collective effect of the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act, the two biggies in the field.

In the past few years, the Biden administration has dabbled with a more expansive approach, and not just via the appointment of an antitrust hawk to lead the Federal Trade Commission. In 2021 and 2022, the Justice Department succeeded in blocking the takeover of publishing behemoth Simon & Schuster by fellow giant Penguin Random House. Book publishing used to have a Big Six, but consolidation made it a Big Five, and the latest transaction would have made it a Big Four. The DOJ did believe that the deal was bad for consumers, who could have gotten less variety of books and paid more for them. But perhaps the sharpest focus of the case was on how consolidation affected authors , who were at risk of losing one of vanishingly few publishers who might pay them for their work. (In an awkward victory with its own strings attached, Simon & Schuster went to a private equity firm .) The matter wasn’t about the publishers’ employees or book buyers as much as it was about another vendor in the supply chain, perhaps the most important one: the people who actually write the books.

The Live Nation lawsuit carries on this approach. The feds lament the way Ticketmaster, by far the biggest player in concert ticketing, piles costs that “far exceed fees in comparable parts of the world” onto concertgoers’ laps. But the suit is really about an ecosystem, about how Live Nation’s control of a ticketing giant contributes to its control of venues and event promotion and worsens the whole enterprise. Artists have less freedom to promote their work as they see fit and perform in ideal venues. Promoters miss out on lots of business if they don’t play by Live Nation’s rules. And concert venues are at risk of not getting good acts if they don’t work within a ticketing system that (for one thing) sucks and (for another) may not enable them to maximize their revenue and keep their patrons happy.

Begin where all music begins: with the artist. The federal complaint spends a lot of time on the relationship between Live Nation and a potential competitor–turned–partner called Oak View Group. Specifically, the suit turns up correspondence between the two companies’ leadership in which Live Nation gets wind that Oak View Group is bidding to be the promoter of an artist’s tour that Live Nation would prefer to promote. Live Nation’s CEO, Michael Rapino, emails Oak View Group’s CEO and says it would be “stupid” to “play into the hands” of the artist’s agent by letting the companies bid against each other to promote the tour. Oak View’s CEO agrees and literally writes, “I never want to be competitors.” An artist, then, gets worse offers from potential promoters, who arrange the show’s logistics and help sell it to the public.

But that works out well for Oak View, which gets to host events at its venues featuring artists who are under promotional contract with Live Nation. The feds say that Oak View Group has described itself as both a “hammer” and a “pimp” to protect Live Nation’s interests, despite being positioned to compete.

Meanwhile, Live Nation owns tons of music venues, and it can withhold access to those venues from artists who don’t use Live Nation as a promoter. The feds say Live Nation has a monopoly on large amphitheaters, controlling 40 of the country’s 50 biggest. As the owner of ideal type of venue for artists who are too big for a club but can’t fill an arena or NFL stadium, Live Nation has a lot of power over artists who want to play to growing crowds. The lawsuit features a Live Nation executive urging employees not to increase promotional offers to artists in that bucket, knowing they lack other options. And for access to the amphitheater, the complaint says, artists lock themselves into long-term Live Nation deals.

That’s at the venues Live Nation owns. At other venues, the lawsuit describes a routine practice of Live Nation demanding that venues use Ticketmaster as their ticketing service in order to get Live Nation acts. Rapino, the CEO, has described the dynamic in shockingly mafialike terms, which the Justice Department excerpts in the suit. Rapino, in public , acknowledged not being able to explicitly withhold Live Nation acts from venues that don’t want to use Ticketmaster, but then said, “We have to put the show where we make the most economics, and maybe that venue won’t be the best economic place anymore because we don’t hold the revenue.” Thus, a venue not keen on using Ticketmaster may not have tickets to sell at all—at least not to a frontline act that’s part of the Live Nation portfolio.

Non-Live Nation promoters catch hell, too. The complaint describes one that arranged a concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum and contracted with StubHub, not Ticketmaster, to manage ticketing. Ticketmaster, claiming exclusive rights to sell tickets to Coliseum concerts, “threatened to deny entry to any fan using a StubHub-issued ticket,” according to the suit. StubHub stopped selling tickets to the event, and the DOJ says that “hundreds” of customers with StubHub tickets weren’t able to get into the concert.

This is all quite rotten. It should not be allowed, and the official position of the United States is that it isn’t allowed, and Live Nation’s businesses should be broken apart. (The company’s promotional business is much bigger than its ticketing business, doing about six times as much revenue out of a $22 billion total in 2022.) Live Nation’s dominance is bad for ticket buyers, but the suit makes clear it’s bad for so many other parties involved in staging a concert. And that begins, as everything in music does, with the artist.

The federal government is mounting similar cases right now against Amazon (via the FTC) and Apple (the DOJ), accusing each of them of abusively using dominance in certain areas to bully competitors in others. The government has plenty of potential targets if it wants to mount more of these cases. The most Live Nation–esque target might be Fanatics, the sports retailer whose occasionally shoddy merchandise, quality control, and customer service have made it one of the most disdained brands in sports. But the biggest problem with Fanatics isn’t the lousy Major League Baseball uniforms it collaborated on with Nike. It is the way Fanatics has amassed market power to get its way in numerous sectors of the sports industry, from trading cards to licensing to retail. The real story there isn’t bad jerseys as much as corporate power, just how the big problem with Ticketmaster wasn’t all those Taylor Swift tickets.

U.S., states sue to ‘break up’ Ticketmaster parent Live Nation

The lawsuit contends that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, leveraged its sprawling footprint to box out rivals, lessening consumer choice and resulting in rising prices for consumers.

The U.S. government filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit Thursday against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, seeking to break up the conglomerate over allegations that it has amassed and abused unrivaled power in the ticketing and concert industries.

The landmark case — joined by 30 state and district attorneys general — could dramatically reshape an ecosystem that has long sparked outrage from artists and fans alike, whose frustrations erupted in 2022 when high fees and site outages disrupted early sales for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour.

Live Nation is an entertainment titan: It is a concert promoter, artist manager, venue owner, and ticket seller and reseller, constituting a sprawling empire that its executives publicly herald as the “largest live entertainment company in the world.” Last year alone, the company produced more than 50,000 concerts and other musical events and it sold over 620 million tickets globally, it boasted to investors in April.

But the U.S. government contends that Live Nation’s vast power and reach have afforded it unfair advantages over competitors, allowing the company to evolve into an illegal and harmful “monopolist” — with the power to box out rivals, reduce consumer choices and raise ticket prices.

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“It is time to break it up,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference Thursday.

State and federal officials allege that Live Nation threatens to retaliate against performance venues unless they agree to use the company’s Ticketmaster service. Otherwise, these venue operators risk losing access to popular Live Nation-managed performances and tours — an unfavorable ultimatum, according to the government, that has allowed Ticketmaster to lock up more than 70 percent of sales at major concert venues.

To further entrench its dominance, Live Nation also targets artists: Performers at times must use Live Nation’s tour promotional services, or they cannot perform at company-operated venues, the complaint alleges. Live Nation owns or controls 265 concert venues in North America, including 60 of the top 100 amphitheaters in the United States, according to the government’s estimates.

State and federal antitrust watchdogs contend these arrangements have ultimately restricted artists, arrested the growth of competing ticketing services, and imposed higher costs on audience members who face a “Ticketmaster tax” in the form of steep and “endless” fees, charged Jonathan Kanter, who oversees antitrust for the Justice Department.

“Some monopolies are just so entrenched, and some problems so difficult to address, that they require decisive and effective solutions,” he later explained.

The complaint asks a federal judge in New York to order structural changes to Live Nation — which could effectively force the company to break up. A long, arduous court battle is now likely to follow, one that will see the Justice Department argue for unwinding a merger that the agency itself approved more than a decade ago.

In a statement Thursday, Live Nation sharply rebutted the charges that it violated anti-monopoly laws. Dan Wall, the company’s executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs, said the government “ignores everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices,” including higher production costs, artist popularity and ticket “scalping.”

“It’s also clear that we are another casualty of this administration’s decision to turn over antitrust enforcement to a populist urge that simply rejects how antitrust law works,” he added.

The lawsuit marks the latest federal antitrust case initiated under President Biden , who came to office promising to crack down on corporate power and profiteering. Over the past three years, federal watchdogs have sued major technology companies including Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google for allegedly anticompetitive practices, and they have blocked major mergers involving airlines, biotech firms and grocery chains.

“Maybe it took people by surprise, but the president said [the government] wanted to do something on this, and they have,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the top lawmaker on the chamber’s antitrust panel. She added that Washington never should have allowed Live Nation to acquire Ticketmaster in the first place.

“However you look at it,” she said, “that’s a monopoly.”

Nearly 15 years ago, it was Washington’s blessing that paved the way for Live Nation to expand its corporate footprint: The Justice Department gave the green light in 2010 for the company to purchase Ticketmaster, combining what was already the largest concert promoter with the most prominent ticketing platform.

The deal created a powerhouse that could manage every part of a performance. It could plan and execute the logistics around an artist’s tour, handle all of their initial sales through Ticketmaster and stage some of the shows at Live Nation’s own venues , including the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles and the Brooklyn Bowl in New York.

In a bid to preserve competition, the Obama administration approved the merger only on a conditional basis. It required Live Nation to divest some of its business lines, and it prohibited the combined company from retaliating against venues that opted to use alternative ticketing platforms. At the time, federal officials said their consent decree would pave the way “for strong competitors to Ticketmaster, allowing concert venues to have more and better choices for their ticketing needs.”

But the legally binding agreement didn’t quell broad opposition from concert venue owners and artists, who grumbled in the years to follow about the ease with which Live Nation allegedly flouted the federal restrictions. The accusations are laid bare in the government’s roughly 120-page complaint, filed Thursday in a federal court in New York.

“With this vast scope of power comes influence. Live Nation and its wholly owned subsidiary, Ticketmaster, have used that power and influence to insert themselves at the center and the edges of virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem,” the complaint alleges. “This has given Live Nation and Ticketmaster the opportunity to freeze innovation and bend the industry to their own benefit.”

The Justice Department filed its case alongside attorneys general for Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Texas and D.C., among other jurisdictions. Rob Bonta, the Democratic attorney general of California, said customers “have a terrible experience on Ticketmaster, they hate it, it’s frustrating, but its all they got because Ticketmaster has no real competition.”

The lawsuit charges that Live Nation gobbled up some of its rivals — and struck anti-competitive arrangements with others — in a bid to further solidify Ticketmaster as a dominant sales platform. The antitrust watchdogs offered the example of Oak View Group, described by the government as a “competitor-turned-partner” with which Live Nation brokered a deal to avoid competing over artists and tours they would manage. Whenever the company did try to compete for artists, Live Nation “repeatedly scolded Oak View,” Garland said Thursday.

In response, Live Nation said in a blog post that its integration had actually helped concertgoers and artists alike, since it resulted in “better prices and better services than they would receive if these complementary businesses were separated.”

The Justice Department launched its latest Live Nation investigation in 2022, two years after the agency under President Donald Trump found that the company had “repeatedly” broken its promises to antitrust enforcers. As a federal lawsuit became imminent this spring, competition experts urged the Biden administration to remedy its predecessors’ mistakes by unwinding a company that they said had leveraged its dominance to the detriment of rivals.

“It’s clear what the DOJ has tried previously … has not worked,” said Sumit Sharma, a senior researcher at Consumer Reports. “Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s market share has remained the same.”

The first word of the federal probe arrived on the heels of another fiasco — a surge of demand for Taylor Swift presale tickets in 2022 that crashed Ticketmaster and left countless fans unable to buy seats for her 2023 tour . The widely documented incident put a fresh spotlight on the company, its dominance in ticketing and the fees that it charges consumers.

Policymakers around the country soon unleashed a battery of legislative proposals meant to crack down on abuse in ticketing and better highlight the fees that customers face before they reach the checkout page. On Capitol Hill, Klobuchar summoned Joe Berchtold, the president of Live Nation, for a lengthy grilling over his company’s business practices.

“We hear people say that ticketing markets are less competitive today than they were at the time of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger,” Berchtold said in his testimony . “That is simply not true.”

But the company’s critics and competitors swiped at Live Nation for issuing ultimatums to concert halls and sports venues that could not afford to lose the company’s business. Jack Groetzinger, the chief executive of SeatGeek, a competing platform, said the fears of retaliation had allowed Live Nation to grow unchecked: He estimated that Ticketmaster came to amass a market share exceeding 70 percent in primary ticket sales, especially for professional basketball, hockey and football games.

“Major venues in the United States know that if they move their primary ticketing business from Ticketmaster to a competitor, they risk losing the substantial revenue they earn from Live Nation concerts,” Groetzinger said.

On Thursday, state and federal officials acknowledged SeatGeek’s competition concerns. Their lawsuit cites a 2021 incident in which Live Nation “threatened retaliation against a venue that had decided to switch from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek for primary ticketing,” according to the complaint.

Live Nation “followed through on its threats, rerouting concerts to other venues,” officials allege. The government does not name the venue in its complaint, but the details appear to align with a known previous incident involving the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which switched vendors in 2021 and then later returned to using Ticketmaster last year.

“We believe this lawsuit will drive innovation and improve ticketing for fans — something SeatGeek has been focused on since the very beginning,” Groetzinger said in a statement Thursday. “It’s time to give fans, teams, artists and venues the choice and experiences they deserve.”

The heightened scrutiny has promoted Live Nation to scale up its political operation dramatically in recent years: The company spent $2.3 million to influence Washington policymakers in 2023, more than double the year prior, according to OpenSecrets, a money-in-politics watchdog.

Live Nation has continued its spending spree into 2024, helping to host a party around the annual White House correspondents’ dinner — a swanky performance that touted the company’s bona fides on cocktail napkins.

“We’ve seen an uptick in their lobbying spending,” acknowledged Morgan Harper, the director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, a left-leaning group that has advocated for Live Nation to be broken up. “It’s not surprising an entity like Live Nation, whose business model has allowed them to engage in anti-competitive conduct, would be bringing to bear all the resources it has.”