The United States Department of Justice was joined by nearly 30 state governments in a groundbreaking lawsuit to break up Live Nation Entertainment as an illegal monopoly.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in New York claims that Live Nation and ticketing behemoth Ticketmaster formed an illegal monopoly over the live events industry by compelling venues into exclusive contracts and retaliating against potential rivals and venues that attempted to work with them. The lawsuit claims that these anti-competitive practices have resulted in Live Nation controlling upwards of 80% of the ticketing industry for significant concert venues.
Live Nation abused its monopoly to the detriment of venues, artists and concertgoers, the lawsuit alleges.
The only way to restore competition that benefits consumers in the ticketing industry is to force Live Nation into divesting Ticketmaster — breaking up the company.
In an incredibly weak response, Live Nation claimed that the DOJ’s lawsuit “won’t solve the issues fans care about.”
Don't Stay In 
Get on our guest list for news from 5 Mag and you'll never miss a thing. It's free and we don't sell your shit. 
Live Nation claims the DOJ “will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment, such as the fact that the bulk of service fees go to venues, and that competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margin.”
5 Mag wrote about the fate of one such Ticketmaster rival, CrowdSurge, which was dubbed a “threat” and a dangerous “insurgent” by executives at Ticketmaster for creating a compelling product around artist-centered innovations that improved the sale of pre-sale tickets. CrowdSurge had their business cloned and their company destroyed after a former developer was hired by Ticketmaster and divulged insider secrets, data and passwords, as Ticketmaster executives encouraged each other to “screen-grab the hell out of the system” during breaches of CrowdSurge’s systems.
Within two years, CrowdSurge had been crushed. After proof of the hacking conspiracy was revealed in litigation with CrowdSurge’s successor, Ticketmaster was eventually compelled to sign a deferred prosecution agreement with the government on New Year’s Eve 2020 in which Ticketmaster “admits, accepts and acknowledges that it is responsible under United States law for the acts of its officers, directors, employees and agents” who committed several substantial crimes.”
