Live Nation has pushed back on public sentiment that it and its asset Ticketmaster are to blame for higher ticket prices.
Anyone with even a passive interest in the live music industry has likely heard the notion that Live Nation and Ticketmaster, the ticketing platform it owns, are to blame for swelling ticket prices. The conglomerate promoter has now defended itself by publishing a blog post titled “The Truth About Ticket Prices.”
In the 2,800-word piece, Live Nation VP Dan Wall clarifies what he asserts are a number of misconceptions about the influence it exerts on ticket prices. Chief among these is the idea that Ticketmaster has any role in setting prices in the first place, when Wall writes that they simply provide technology and services to the decisionmakers who do control prices.
“Tickets are actually priced by artists and teams,” he argues. “It’s their show, they get to decide what it costs to get in. The NFL tickets on Ticketmaster were priced by the home teams, concert tickets were priced by the performer’s business teams, Monster Jam tickets were priced by its producer (Feld Entertainment), and so forth.”
Wall also addresses the attitude that Ticketmaster’s tacks exorbitant fees onto each ticket purchase. “Fans are also told that service charges are Ticketmaster’s way of raising ticket prices,” he writes. “In fact, Ticketmaster does not set service charges, venues do, and most of the money goes to the venues.”
Shifting his focus to Live Nation itself, Wall condemns arguments about the company’s role in concert pricing as “inconsistent.” He points out that “Some claim that Live Nation is so powerful in concert promotion that it can dictate what artists charge; others claim that Live Nation can raise its prices to artists, and this gets passed through to fans in higher ticket prices. Neither argument is plausible.”
Wall provides an example of a concert in a 5,000-seat venue for which the artist charges a guarantee of $100,000. “There is no way for a responsible promoter to offer that guarantee without at least a general understanding of what those 5,000 tickets will sell for,” he argues. “This is the same reason why the investors on Shark Tank ask potential partners how much they charge for their products. If your money is at risk, you pay attention to pricing.”
Live Nation was founded in 1996 and was initially called SFX Entertaiment — the first of two companies founded by the late Robert F.X. Sillerman to be given that name before later rebranding. In 2010 it acquired Ticketmaster, founded in 1976, to launch Live Nation Entertainment.
Many have raised antitrust concerns about the merger over the grounds that a single company controlling an entire supply chain prevents healthy competition in the market. After demand for tickets to Taylor Swift‘s Midnights album tour left countless fans empty handed with outrageously priced tickets popping up on the secondary market, the US Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment.
Will Dan Wall’s article succeed in fostering a more positive perception of Ticketmaster or Live Nation? Probably not — but it’s safe to say that neither company is going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
