Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST NEWS: Ticketmaster, Live Nation charged with foreclosing competition for concert ticketing services, (Dec 23, 2015)

By Linda O’Brien, J.D., LL.M.

The world’s largest ticketing services and concert promotion providers, Ticketmaster and Live Nation, have used their monopoly power to eliminate competition for concert presale ticket allocation services, according to a complaint filed in the federal district court in Los Angeles (Complete Entertainment Resources LLC v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., December 22, 2015).

Ticketmaster, a sales tickets and distribution company, merged with Live Nation Entertainment, a concert promoter, in 2010 to become the world’s largest primary ticketing services and concert promotion company. Ticketmaster and Live Nation hold long-term exclusive dealing contracts with the vast majority of major concert venues throughout the United States. Complete Entertainment Resources, doing business as Songkick, is a concert ticket technology company that designs ticket presales and marketing for bands and musicians.

The complaint states that Songkick offers artists a means to sell tickets for their concerts directly to their fans and allows artists to design marketing services to maximize their touring revenues. Traditional concert venue ticketing services providers, such as Ticketmaster, typically resist sharing ticket purchaser data with artists. Songkick always provides such data to artists and actively works with artists to use the data to develop marketing and promotional tools.

During the past four years, Ticketmaster and Live Nation have attempted to eliminate competition in the artist presale ticketing services market in several different ways, Songkick charged. First, the defendants created artificial barriers in the artist allocation and presale process, and blocked numerous artists from using Songkick’s services. Second, they exploited their monopoly power to force venues to stop supplying artist presale allocations if the artists selected a non-Ticketmaster ticketing service to sell those allocations and coerced artists to permit only Ticketmaster to sell their artist presale allocations, the lawsuit alleges.

Although Songkick allegedly has sought to reach a resolution with Ticketmaster and Live Nation—guaranteeing that artists who use Songkick will not be penalized—the defendants engaged in predatory acts to interfere with Songkick’s ability to provide artist presale ticketing services. As a result of the defendants’ conduct, Songkick has lost significant business, customers, and revenues, according to the complaint.

The plaintiff asserts claims for promissory estoppel, intentional interference with contractual relations, intentional interference with prospective economic relations, and monopolization and attempted monopolization in violation of the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, and California’s Unfair Competition Law. The action seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, treble damages, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, costs of suit, attorney fees, and any other just and proper relief.

The case is No. 2:15-cv-09814-DSF-AGR.

Attorneys: Frederick A. Lorig, Kevin Teruya, and Adam Wolfson (Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP) for Complete Entertainment Resources, LLC.

Companies: Complete Entertainment Resources, LLC; Live Nation Entertainment, Inc.; Ticketmaster LLC

News: Antitrust CaliforniaNews