written to the Department of Justice\u00a0<\/a>opposing the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger, arguing that it would turn the \u201calready questionable ticket selling industry into an even less competitive environment for consumers.\u201d
The three groups signing the letter \u2013 the National Consumers League, Consumer Federation of America and Consumer Action – are concerned that the companies individually already own extremely large shares of the sectors in the live entertainment event industry, and that the merging of these two giants should be closely and skeptically reviewed under anti-trust law. This could turn the already questionable ticket selling industry into an even less competitive environment for consumers.
\u201cBuying tickets to live performances in today\u2019s marketplace is fraught with pitfalls for consumers. Tickets are put on the secondary market routinely \u2013 and marked up two to three times their value before consumers ever have a chance to buy them at face value. There is no transparency in the market, and this merger would only make the problem worse,\u201d said Sally Greenberg, Executive Director of the National Consumers League.\u00a0
\u201cIf allowed to merge, these firms would control so much of the music marketplace that no one could stop them from raising ticket prices and service fees, meaning fans would pay,\u201d said Linda Sherry, Consumer Action director of national priorities. \u201cNo single company should have that much control over access to live entertainment.\u201d
The letter opposes the merger on two grounds:
First, the groups say the merger would create a \u201cvirtual monopoly in the ticketing industry.\u201d Some industry experts estimate that Ticketmaster, which has secured its place in the market through long-term contracts with its clients, controls up to 70 or 80 percent of all concert ticket sales. Live Nation, which entered the ticket-selling market in early 2009, \u201chas already demonstrated its potential to become Ticketmaster\u2019s only significant competitor.\u201d
Second, the letter states that the merger would \u201ccreate a massive entertainment giant, Live Nation Entertainment, which would hold significant market shares in the artist management, venue operation, event promotion, ticketing, and secondary ticketing sectors of the live entertainment event industry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 28, 2009 Contact: 202-835-3323, media@nclnet.orgWashington, DC \u2014 Several national consumer organizations have\u00a0written to the Department of Justice\u00a0opposing the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger, arguing that it would turn the \u201calready questionable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11423,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions\/11423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}