The Ticketmaster and Live Nation Merger: Why They Should Have Never Ever Been Together

In 2010, Live Nation, one of the nation’s leading ticket sellers and concert promotors, merged with Ticketmaster, the nation’s leading ticketing company, to form an entertainment colossus that handles ticket services, artist management, concert promotion, and venue ownership. Although the U.S. Department of Justice scrutinized this merger, it was ultimately approved, subject to a controversial consent decree that was subsequently extended and modified. Recently, Ticketmaster’s website crashed when Taylor Swift fans attempted to purchase tickets to her first tour in four years. The uproar caused by this crash ignited renewed scrutiny of the merger by lawmakers and the Department of Justice. Ticketmaster has continued to grow into a behemoth since the 2010 merger, and attempts to challenge it as a monopoly have largely failed because of the many barriers plaintiffs face when attempting to enforce antitrust laws against a vertically integrated monopoly. This Note argues that, given the current state of the law and the Department of Justice’s mild and ineffective responses to recent mergers, Congress needs to modernize and strengthen outdated federal antitrust laws to provide for steeper civil fines, equitable burden shifting that does not unduly penalize plaintiffs, and tools that will enable the Department of Justice to more effectively handle the problems caused by monopolization and anti-competitive measures in the live entertainment industry.