Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino.
Scott Mlyn|CNBC
A Senate investigative subcommittee on Monday stated it has actually released a subpoena to Live Nation Entertainment and its Ticketmaster subsidiary for details concerning ticket prices and charges after a months-long probe that had actually not been formerly revealed.
The subpoena “seeks records related to Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s failure to combat artificially inflated demand fueled by bots in multiple, high-profile incidents, which resulted in consumers being charged exorbitant ticket prices,” the subcommittee’s chair,Sen Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, composed in a letter to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino.
In a declaration Monday, Blumenthal stated, “Live Nation has egregiously stonewalled my Subcommittee’s inquiry into its abusive consumer practices — making the subpoena necessary.”
“American consumers deserve fair ticket prices, without hidden fees or predatory charges,” statedBlumenthal “And the American public deserves to know how Ticketmaster’s unfair practices may be enabled by its misuse of monopoly power.”
A Live Nation representative, in an e-mail to CNBC, stated, “Live Nation has voluntarily worked with the Subcommittee from the start, providing extensive information and holding several meetings with staff.”
“In order to provide additional information requested about artist and client compensation and other similarly sensitive matters, we’ve asked for standard confidentiality measures,” the business representative stated. “Thus far the Subcommittee has refused to provide such assurances, but if and when those protections are in place we will provide additional information on these issues.”
Live Nation, an occasion promoter, and the ticket supplier Ticketmaster now control 70% of the marketplace for tickets and live occasion locations after their merger more than a years earlier.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened its probe in March after debate over sales problems and rates of tickets for shows by Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen, according to Blumenthal’s panel.
The brand-new subpoena looks for files and internal interactions about “ticket pricing, fees, and resale practices as well as the company’s relationship with artists and venues,” according to the panel.
“The request covers annual financial data related to fees, the company’s recommendations for ticket pricing, business strategies regarding ticket pricing, secondary ticketing, and bots, communications relating to high-profile incidents in 2022, and customer research and surveys regarding ticket pricing and fees,” the panel stated.
Blumenthal, in his letter to Rapino recently, which consisted of the subpoena, composed, “Despite nearly eight months and extensive efforts to obtain voluntary compliance, Live Nation/Ticketmaster has failed to fully comply with PSI’s requests, including refusing to produce certain documents critical to the Subcommittee’s inquiry.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee this summertime held a hearing about Live Nation and the absence of competitors in occasion ticketing’s main and secondary markets.
“I just want to dispel this notion that this is not a monopoly and then we can go from there about solutions,” statedSen Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn, at that hearing.
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