• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Corporate America has been draining the world's water. Matt Damon's new campaign calls on Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon to help give it back

2

When SpaceX starts trading, some 'shareholders' will discover they own nothing at all

3

Analysts expected oil to surge above $200 but China has quietly kept prices half of that—and can’t for much longer

1

Corporate America has been draining the world's water. Matt Damon's new campaign calls on Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon to help give it back

2

When SpaceX starts trading, some 'shareholders' will discover they own nothing at all

3

Analysts expected oil to surge above $200 but China has quietly kept prices half of that—and can’t for much longer
TechTicketmaster

The U.S. is reportedly preparing to sue Ticketmaster over the monopolistic behavior that outraged Swifties last year

Sunny Nagpaul
By
Sunny Nagpaul
Sunny Nagpaul
Down Arrow Button Icon
Sunny Nagpaul
By
Sunny Nagpaul
Sunny Nagpaul
Down Arrow Button Icon
April 16, 2024, 5:34 PM ET
When Ticketmaster crashed during a fan presale for Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour,' fans suffered through a series of unfortunate events–hours- and days-long wait times for tickets, waves of bots purchasing and upselling tickets, and unpredictable prices–only for many of them to end up without tickets.
Live Nation's suffered a black eye when its Ticketmaster crashed during a fan presale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Ashok Kumar/TAS24/Getty Images

The Department of Justice is reportedly preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, as soon as next month, marking a swing against the world’s biggest ticket seller and another chapter in the Biden administration’s ambitious antimonopoly efforts. 

Recommended Video

The specific claims regulators would allege are unclear, but according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the suit, it will concern how the concert-promoting company has leveraged its dominance to undermine its competitors. 

Neither Ticketmaster nor the Justice Department responded to Fortune’s request for comment.

The DOJ launched an investigation into Ticketmaster in the summer of 2022 to probe alleged anticompetitive practices. A Senate subcommittee also launched an investigation last year. 

While Ticketmaster has long been a target of hate for concertgoers, musicians, and some venues, the ire reached a new level in the fall of 2022, when the site crashed during a fan presale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Fans suffered through a series of unfortunate events—hours- and days-long wait times for tickets, waves of bots purchasing and upselling tickets, and unpredictable prices—only for many of them to end up without seats. The debacle saw members of Swift’s fan base suing Ticketmaster too. The government’s latest move shows that these concerns are still top of mind for regulators hoping to crack down on the ticket seller’s practices.

It’s a sharp turnaround from a decade ago, when the DOJ essentially green-lighted Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster. Since the 2010 deal, which merged the world’s largest live concert producer with the world’s leading live entertainment ticketing company, the group has faced international accusations of excessive ticket fees, poor customer service, and bullying of smaller competitors. At the time of the merger, the federal government cleared the deal but issued a legal order, called a consent decree, that barred the company from pressuring concert venues to use its ticketing software—something it has since repeatedly been accused of doing. The 10-year consent decree was extended in 2020, giving the Justice Department more power to regulate the company’s market dominance. 

And without a doubt, that dominance is massive. Ticketmaster processes around 500 million tickets around the world each year and reportedly controls more than 80% of the market share for major concerts, according to a report by marketing software developer HubSpot. The company has been growing, too—its revenue reached $22.7 billion in 2023, according to its annual report, up 36% from the year before. Ticketmaster’s revenue also grew 73% between the first and second quarter of 2023 and the company sold a record-breaking 90 million tickets during the first five months of the year. 

Ironically, though, the company’s indisputable profits are part of why it’s now the subject of several antitrust investigations meant to tackle potentially anticompetitive practices fueling the company’s growth. 

One of those is the high price of tickets, which particularly outraged rapper Drake’s fan base over one of his March 2023 shows, where customers didn’t expect tickets to sell for hundreds of dollars. The year before, tickets to see rocker Bruce Springsteen reached as high as $5,000 on the platform, thanks to its pricing algorithm.

Ticketmaster has maintained that ticket prices are set by artists and their teams, and said in a blog post that “the venue normally gets around two-thirds of the service charge and in many cases a facility fee as well.” Still, the company has come under fire for those high service fees, which often tack on extra hundreds of dollars to ticket orders.

Beyond that, Ticketmaster’s heavyweight status has a stranglehold on the live events industry: Nearly 78% of the highest-grossing arenas and 64% of the highest-grossing amphitheaters in the country operate using Ticketmaster’s services, according to an American Economic Liberties Project report from June 2023. With fewer competitors to buy from, that means customers often can’t avoid paying the service fees Ticketmaster tacks on. 

In a 2022 statement, Live Nation wrote that the market for secondary ticketing is “extremely competitive, with Ticketmaster competing with StubHub, SeatGeek, Vivid, and many others,” and that “no serious argument can be made that Ticketmaster has the kind of market position in secondary ticketing that supports antitrust claims.”

Some analysts, like Brandon Ross of LightShed Ventures, said in a post on X that the lawsuit is likely to end in a settlement rather than a breakup of the company, since the government will likely target the company’s business practices rather than its model. 

The federal lawsuit is one of several led by the Justice Department under Biden’s administration, which sued Apple in March for allegedly abusing its dominant position in smartphone and app markets and has sued Google several times since 2020.

About the Author
Sunny Nagpaul
By Sunny Nagpaul
LinkedIn icon
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

Elon Musk stands behind the Nasdaq opening bell and in front of a "SpaceX" background.
Startups & VentureSpaceX
Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Valor, and the biggest VC winners from SpaceX’s IPO
By Allie GarfinkleJune 12, 2026
2 hours ago
Sven Gerjets, chief technology officer at Gap, speaks on stage on a panel at Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2026.
Future of WorkBrainstorm Tech
Why companies are treating AI as a strategic partner rather than a passive technology, and how to avoid an ‘AI hangover’
By Sebastian HerreraJune 12, 2026
3 hours ago
Elon Musk stands behind the Nasdaq opening bell and in front of a "SpaceX" background.
Future of WorkElon Musk
Despite his new trillionaire status, Elon Musk says money ‘will stop being relevant’ in the future because of AI
By Sasha RogelbergJune 12, 2026
4 hours ago
AI was supposed to cut health care costs. One of its first jobs was charging you more, PwC report shows
AIHealth Care Service
AI was supposed to cut health care costs. One of its first jobs was charging you more, PwC report shows
By Whizy Kim and Tech BrewJune 12, 2026
4 hours ago
paul
AIWorld Cup
Machine learning gives the U.S. a 1% chance of winning the World Cup final in its own backyard
By Achim Zeileis and The ConversationJune 12, 2026
4 hours ago
DoorDash wants you to stop scrolling and just tell its new AI chatbot what you’re hungry for
RetailDoorDash
DoorDash wants you to stop scrolling and just tell its new AI chatbot what you’re hungry for
By Dave Lozo and Morning BrewJune 12, 2026
4 hours ago

Most Popular

Corporate America has been draining the world's water. Matt Damon's new campaign calls on Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon to help give it back
Environment
Corporate America has been draining the world's water. Matt Damon's new campaign calls on Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon to help give it back
By Catherina GioinoJune 9, 2026
3 days ago
When SpaceX starts trading, some 'shareholders' will discover they own nothing at all
Investing
When SpaceX starts trading, some 'shareholders' will discover they own nothing at all
By Jim EdwardsJune 12, 2026
12 hours ago
Analysts expected oil to surge above $200 but China has quietly kept prices half of that—and can’t for much longer
Energy
Analysts expected oil to surge above $200 but China has quietly kept prices half of that—and can’t for much longer
By Sasha RogelbergJune 10, 2026
2 days ago
Current price of oil as of June 11, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of June 11, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJune 11, 2026
1 day ago
American taxpayers have spent $33 billion on sports stadiums. They got fewer seats—and higher prices
Success
American taxpayers have spent $33 billion on sports stadiums. They got fewer seats—and higher prices
By Catherina GioinoJune 11, 2026
1 day ago
Current price of oil as of June 12, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of June 12, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJune 12, 2026
10 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.