Ticketbastard

Live Nation deserves every ounce of contempt it has provoked

“Ticketbastard – another word for Ticketmaster, a monopoly that is in the ticket selling and distribution business. Also see bastard.” – Urban Dictionary

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Perhaps your favorite concert T-shirt says, “ticketbastard.” Or maybe you bought the album by country singer-songwriter Zach Bryan titled “All my homies hate Ticketmaster. Or maybe you’re still flustered about the 2022 Taylor Swift Eras Tour fiasco that the top-selling performer described as putting her fans through “bear attacks.”

Ticketmaster doesn’t care. It’s too big to care. It calls itself Ticketmaster because if you want entertainment, you are its Ticketslave.

(Photo Credit: Tdorante10, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.)

For decades, performers, competitors and consumers have been begging the Justice Department to do something about this ticket monster. Last week, it finally did, filing an antitrust lawsuit with 30 state attorneys general against its parent company Live Nation Entertainment.

“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 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.”

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