Why has a night out at a concert started to feel like a down payment on a car? Part of the answer has a name: Ticketmaster.
Owned by Live Nation, Ticketmaster controls about 80% of primary ticketing in the U.S. That’s not a healthy market — that’s a company with little reason to compete and every reason to protect what it already has. Michigan fans are the ones footing the bill.
There’s reason for hope, though. Lawmakers and the courts are finally paying attention.
Earlier this year, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel won a major case against the company along with some of her fellow state attorneys general from across the country. A federal jury found that Live Nation illegally maintained monopoly power over parts of the live concert industry.
“I am relieved that the jury saw that Live Nation and Ticketmaster limited choice and illegally inflated prices at the expense of concertgoers,” Nessel said after the verdict.
Michigan fans didn’t need a jury to tell them that.
Nobody expects every ticket to be cheap — big names come with big price tags, and most fans get that. But there’s a difference between paying a premium for a hot show and paying a monopoly tax because you have no other option. Consumers deserve a marketplace where ticketing companies actually have to earn their business.
That’s where an open distribution system comes in.
Rather than locking fans into one platform, venues and artists could sell through multiple ticketing companies. More competition means more choice — and pressure on sellers to lower fees, improve service and actually treat concertgoers like customers instead of captive audiences. Congress can legislate this type of system if it so chooses.
But there is also lower-hanging fruit; that is a good first step. Congress should pass the TICKET Act.
The TICKET Act would force sellers to show the full cost of a ticket up front, before checkout and would ban speculative ticket sales. It won’t single-handedly bring prices down, but it would make comparison shopping possible and inject some fairness back into the process.
The bill has already cleared the House of Representatives with an overwhelming bipartisan vote.
Meanwhile, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee — fortunately, a committee where one of Michigan’s own, Sen. Gary Peters, sits — voted to report it out favorably more than a year ago, and it’s now sitting on the Senate’s legislative calendar. Senate leadership just needs to schedule it for a vote.
This isn’t just about entertainment, either. Concerts fill restaurants, bars, hotels and parking garages. When prices climb high enough to keep fans home, those businesses feel it too.
Michigan has some of the best venues in the country and draws world-class acts every year. Fans should be arguing about setlists — not wondering why ticket costs are sky high.
Whether Ticketmaster’s market power deserves scrutiny isn’t really in question anymore. Michigan’s attorney general already settled that.
The question now is whether Congress will finish what the courts started.
Brett M. Decker is the Endowed Chair of Leadership at Northwood University.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Ticketmaster has too much power. Congress should act. | Opinion
Reporting by Brett Decker / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Brett Decker | USA TODAY Network
