Ticketmaster will testify publicly for the first time since the concert promoter's highly publicized meltdown late last year during ticket sales for Taylor Swift's 'Eras' tour.
The episode also led to calls for a breakup of Ticketmaster, with critics charging that the ticketing platform, promoter and venue owner monopolizes the market for events.
Ticketmaster is estimated to have a market share of more than 70% of the U.S. primary ticketing industry, and is the primary ticketer for over 80% of professional sports teams and venues for the NBA, NHL and NFL. Live Nation disputes those claims, saying that its market share has shrunk since the 2010 merger.
"Ticketmaster has lost, not gained, market share, and every year competitive bidding results in ticketing companies getting less of the economic value in a ticketing contract while venues and teams get more," Berchtold said."U.S. ticketing markets have never been more competitive than they are today, and we read about new potential entrants all the time."
The Senate panel is also set to hear from ticketing platform SeatGeek, live-event producer Jam Productions and singer-songwriter Clyde Lawrence, as well as scholars who study antitrust.Live Nation put much of the blame on bots and scalpers who scoop up tickets in order to resell them. At least some artists agree with this assessment. In a letter supporting Live Nation, country music star Garth Brooks asked the committee to make scalping illegal.
"The crush of bots during an on-sale is a huge reason for program failure NO MATTER WHO THE TICKET SELLING COMPANY is. And the one who ALWAYS pays for this atrocity is the customer, the LAST one on whom that burden should fall," Brooks wrote in a letter submitted to the committee.
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