Congress Will Hold a Hearing on Ticketmaster Following Taylor Swift Fans’ All-too-familiar Monopolistic Experiences

A hearing on the absence of competition in the ticketing sector will be held by a Senate antitrust subcommittee. The wealthy, the connected, and reportedly now Taylor Swift followers are some of the most powerful voters in America today. Congress Will Hold a Hearing on Ticketmaster Following Taylor Swift.

Senator Amy Klobuchar stated on Tuesday that the Senate’s panel on competition law, antitrust, and consumer rights would hold an inquiry into the absence of competition in the ticketing sector. The announcement follows Swift fans’ worldwide experiences with excessive ticket prices and limited availability for the superstar’s first tour in years.

According to Klobuchar, the panel’s chair, “the exorbitant costs, site outages, and cancellations that customers encountered indicate how Ticketmaster’s dominating market position means the corporation does not face any obligation to consistently innovate and improve.” “As a result, we will host a hearing on how live entertainment and ticketing sector centralization hurts both patrons and artists equally.”

At a later time, more information, including the time and witnesses for the hearing, will be released. Following a number of announcements from officials expressing interest in tackling the problem, the announcement was made.

You May Be Interested In:

• After Being Re-elected, What Will Newsom Do?
• Mastriano, a Trump Supporter, Has Conceded the Governorship of Pennsylvania

Klobuchar expressed her worries about the monopolistic nature of the ticketing industry in a letter to Michael Rapino, CEO of ticketing behemoth Live Nation, this week. She also questioned Rapino on whether Live Nation’s policies were effective in reducing these monopolistic tendencies.

Klobuchar was joined in her criticism of the ticketing industry by Senator Richard Blumenthal, Representatives Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Cicilline, and Bill Pascrell.

In April 2021, Cicilline, Pascrell, and Representatives Frank Pallone and Jerry Nadler urged the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to look into the possible monopolistic activities of ticketing company Live Nation.

And then, on Monday—the day before she announced the hearing—Klobuchar wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland on behalf of Senators Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey, pleading with him to conduct an investigation and “consider unwinding the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger and breaking up the company.”

The conflict goes beyond a few months or even a few years. Pearl Jam members called for the dissolution of Ticketmaster’s monopoly on the consumer market decades ago. Stone Gossard, a guitarist for Pearl Jam, remarked that “all the members remember what it’s like to be young and not have a lot of money.”

We deliberately chose not to make our shows too expensive for our fans, according to the statement. And the conflict goes on. It might now come to an end thanks to Klobuchar and the case of Taylor Swift, who was just a young child when Pearl Jam testified on the same subject.