As it deals with ongoing regulative examination and pricing-related grievances, Live Nation has actually penned a near 3,000-word description of “the fact about ticket costs.” Image Credit: Hanna Tche
Weeks after reporting record fiscal-year profits– and as it faces a magnifying Justice Department examination– Live Nation has actually penned a prolonged breakdown of the viewed “fact about ticket rates.”
Live Nation EVP of business and regulative affairs Dan Wall composed the description, covering an amazing 2,800 approximately words, and published the piece straight on the Beverly Hills-based organization's site. It's barely a trick that the leading promoter has actually experienced all way of criticism and regulative examination for many years.
While even a semi-detailed wrap-up of this long-running pushback would show included, it's worth keeping in mind that late October of 2023 saw Live Nation in addition to Ticketmaster deal with a restored congressional barbecuing over “all-in prices”– or that which shows occasion passes' overall expense, inclusive of all charges, at the beginning.
Towards November's end, the Senate slapped the promoter with a subpoena for supposedly “stonewalling” a query into its declared “violent customer practices.” Individually, the Justice Department has for a long time been carrying out an antitrust probe into the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger, with February of 2024 having actually supposedly provided a fresh batch of associated file demands.
Moving beyond these significant background information, Wall in the discussed breakdown tried to diffuse “antitrust attacks” versus his company by explaining at length its supposed absence of authentic impact over ticket rates.
“Tickets are really priced by artists and groups,” Wall restated. “It's their program, they get to choose what it costs to get in.”
Naturally, the Live Nation officer of a little over one year likewise dove into the ever-controversial subject of ticketing costs, showing in part that “Ticketmaster does not set service fee, places do, and the majority of the cash goes to the locations.” (Of course, Live Nation itself owns a significant variety of places.)
And for excellent procedure, Wall consisted of a visual resource comparing the “commission rates of digital markets,” with Ticketmaster (7 percent) at the bottom thereof and Twitch (“50% on net membership earnings”) positioned at the top.
Next, Wall zeroed in on “the function of the promoter,” discussing in more words that artists and their groups eventually set rates– and choose whether to use vibrant prices designs. The “genuine descriptions for high ticket rates are well-understood and have really little to do with Live Nation or Ticketmaster,” rather relating to easy supply and need, according to the file.
“Statements to the result that Live Nation and Ticketmaster ‘keep ticket costs high' are simply flat incorrect,” Wall included conclusion, after seizing the day to drive home that Taylor Swift is promoted by AEG's Louis Messina. “Anyone with a fundamental understanding of the market understands this. Those who perpetuate this fraud are negative at finest. They do an injustice to customers and to reasonable political discourse.”
Remembering the latter reference of political discourse,
