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    Senate Introduces Long-Awaited Bill Promising Changes for Ticket Buying

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    The Fans First Act would require disclosures about fees and the location of tickets, strengthen a law banning bots and set stiff penalties for violations.The United States Senate introduced a long-awaited bill on Friday promising consumer protections for tickets to live entertainment events, after more than a year of complaints about high fees, out-of-control prices and deceptive selling practices in the entertainment world.The bill, called the Fans First Act, would require sellers to disclose the full price of a ticket, including all fees; indicate what seat or section a customer is gaining access to; and say whether a ticket is being offered by its original or “primary” seller, as opposed to a reseller or broker.The bill, introduced by John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, along with four others, would also strengthen an existing law banning the use of computer bots, a tactic frequently used by scalpers; require ticket sellers to offer full refunds when an event is canceled; set thousands of dollars in penalties for abuse; and require the Government Accountability Office to study the ticketing market and make recommendations.The proposed law comes as ticketing has become a hot-button issue for voters and lawmakers, with prices at record highs and the selling practices of both primary ticketing companies — like Ticketmaster, which tends to represent artists and venue box offices — and resale marketplaces like StubHub and Vivid Seats having come under fire.At a Judiciary Committee hearing in January, two months after Ticketmaster’s system crashed during a Taylor Swift presale, senators from both parties pilloried an executive from Live Nation — which owns Ticketmaster — and called the company a monopoly that harms consumers. Separately, the Justice Department has been conducting an antitrust investigation of Live Nation.At his State of the Union address in February, President Biden said, “We can stop service fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events and make companies disclose all the fees upfront.” And in June, under pressure from the White House, ticket sellers including Ticketmaster and SeatGeek agreed to introduce “all-in pricing” for tickets.That scrutiny has developed as the concert industry had its biggest year ever, with the trade publication Pollstar saying that gross ticket sales for the Top 100 worldwide tours were $9.17 billion in 2023, up 46 percent from the year before, and 65 percent from 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the industry.The new Senate bill proposes steep civil penalties for violations, to be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. According to the bill, those penalties could include $15,000 per day during which a violation occurs, along with $1,000 per event ticket advertised or sold; those fines could amount to as much as five times the listed cost of a ticket.“The current ticketing system is riddled with problems and doesn’t serve the needs of fans, teams, artists or venues,” Mr. Cornyn said in a statement. “This legislation would rebuild trust in the ticketing system by cracking down on bots and others who take advantage of consumers through price gouging and other predatory practices and increase price transparency for ticket purchasers.”Ms. Klobuchar added, “From ensuring fans get refunds for canceled shows to banning speculative ticket sales, this bipartisan legislation will improve the ticketing experience.”In addition to Mr. Cornyn and Ms. Klobuchar, the cosponsors of the bill include two additional Republicans (Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Roger Wicker of Mississippi) and two Democrats (Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Peter Welch of Vermont).The new bill joins a number of other proposed laws in both houses of Congress, which would need to be reconciled for any to become law. In July, the Ticket Act, requiring the upfront disclosure of the full price of a ticket, passed the Commerce Committee. In the House of Representatives this week, another bill calling for transparency in ticket prices passed the Energy and Commerce Committee.The new Senate bill has been in negotiations for months, and some activists have privately complained about its compromises. The bill bans “speculative” selling, in which resale brokers list tickets for sale without actually having them in hand, betting that they can fulfill the order later. But it still allows “concierge” services in which brokers charge fans to wait in a digital line for them, a process that consumer advocates say puts ordinary customers at a disadvantage.Still, the bill has broad support throughout the music industry, including from venue and artist groups; the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammy Awards; and Fix the Tix, a coalition of many talent and industry groups.Live Nation, which has called for government action to reform the ticket market, also said it supports the bill, saying, “We believe it’s critical Congress acts to protect fans and artists from predatory resale practices, and have long supported a federal all-in pricing mandate, banning speculative ticketing and deceptive websites, as well as other measures.” More

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      Want to See Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour? Fans Say ‘Grab Your Passport and My Hand.’

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      Fans are buying up seats for Taylor Swift’s international concerts, often finding that tickets, airfare and lodging combined cost less than just the tickets in the United States.Even with traffic on the 405, it probably would have taken at most three hours for Victoria Pardo Uzitas to drive from her home in San Diego to SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to see a performance of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Instead, she and her teenage daughter crossed the border to Tijuana, flew to Mexico City, enjoyed classic tacos al pastor and churros, saw a Frida Kahlo masterpiece at the Museo de Arte Moderno, and yes, saw Taylor Swift.“Tickets in Los Angeles were $1,900 each,” Ms. Uzitas said of the marked-up prices. “That’s more than we spent on our flights, our hotel and all our food. Our entire trip was less than $1,900.”Ms. Uzitas is not the only Swiftie turning a concert by her favorite artist into an international getaway. And Mexico is certainly not alone in reaping the economic benefits. According to the U.S. Travel Association, the likely economic impact of the 20 domestic stops of Ms. Swift’s tour has already exceeded $10 billion. In Los Angeles alone, Ms. Swift’s six nights of concerts added 3,300 jobs and earned the city $29 million in sales and hotel room taxes, according to U.S. Travel.Now with the tour — which began in March and concludes in November of next year — going on to 26 international destinations, the overseas tourism market is cashing in.Hotel prices across Europe are surging on the nights Ms. Swift comes to town. Contiki, a youth-focused travel agency, is offering five different trips that nod to the singer, including a tour of Paris “for your European love story.” The agency also offers a discount of 13 percent — a reference to Ms. Swift’s self-proclaimed lucky number — on any European trip longer than 14 days. Air New Zealand has already added 2,000 seats to accommodate what it calls the Swift Surge, fans flying to Australia for February dates. (A tip of the hat to whichever executive thought of the flight code NZ1989.)Traveling to see a beloved performer is nothing new. Fan have flown to see U2, parked R.V.s outside Phish and Grateful Dead shows, and spent top dollar to see Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour. Now for Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour, there is no incentive needed for many fans other than being able to score a more affordable ticket in a vacation-worthy destination.“I’m so excited to see the differences in another country,” said Lois Alter Mark, a writer who is parlaying her $400 Edinburgh concert ticket into a Scottish sojourn. “I want to see how you translate all that emotion, though I think Taylor Swift is a universal language at this point.”Evan Chodos, the New York-based vice president for luxury at Condé Nast, is going to Paris to see Ms. Swift less for anthropological reasons and more to right a wrong. He had purchased two resale tickets on StubHub, a total cost of $1,500, for one of Ms. Swift’s Nashville concerts in May, only to be notified 48 hours before showtime that the company could not deliver the tickets. (StubHub guarantees it will try to find a buyer comparably priced tickets, but at that point most tickets were long gone.)Mr. Chodos and his husband considered shelling out $2,000 per ticket for one of the concerts at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey later that month, but opted against paying the exorbitant markup. When tickets to Ms. Swift’s European concerts went on sale, though, they didn’t think twice about purchasing them for Paris, which then determined spring travel plans. “This is our revenge tour,” Mr. Chodos said.Compared with what could have been $4,000 or more to attend a New York-area show, Mr. Chodos spent $1,400 for two V.I.P. seats, which included, as he joked, “a lanyard, a book bag and a lock of her hair.” The money they saved on tickets will go toward a French vacation with friends, who will also attend the show. “There’s nothing wrong with going to Paris in the spring,” Mr. Chodos said of this Swift-centric vacation. “We’ll have some wine, have some bread and have some concert.”Julie Cochran, a marketer in Raleigh, N.C., also let her tickets determine her destination. After three weeks of waking up in the middle of the night to join the ticket-purchasing queue in another time zone, she was able to secure four seats in Milan next summer for $1,700.The plan is an eight-day trip for her family of four to Milan, Florence and, for the sake of her marriage, Rome.“We need to go to the Holy City while we are there. That was the only way to convince my husband to get in on it,” she said. “It’s the worst time possible to be in Italy because it’s the tourist season and it’s so hot, but this is a historic tour.”It’s also presenting a parenting opportunity for Ms. Cochran to talk to her 12- and 16-year-old daughters (who don’t know yet they’re getting these tickets — sorry!) about privilege.“We try to teach our children about excess,” Ms. Cochran said. “Do you know how many families we can feed with that money?”“It’s going to be our summer vacation for the next couple of years, and the girls are going to be very surprised by the lack of boxes under the tree at Christmas,” she continued. “We have a year to save up, and we would have spent twice the amount if we had gone in the United States.”Crystal Orraca from Brooklyn may have been wise enough to take herself to the Eras Tour in Houston in April, but has spent every day since then scouring online ticket resale groups so she can bring her 13-year-old to another show.“She’s extremely angry and tells everyone I chose to go without her, but you know, put your mask on before you put it on someone else,” Ms. Orraca said. She is holding out for affordable tickets to London or Amsterdam, two cities she has always wanted to visit with her daughter. Then again, even if the tickets come through, it’s not easy to plan a summer vacation around a fickle teenager.“I’m spending thousands to appease my mom guilt,” Ms. Orraca said. “Come next summer, will she even care about Taylor Swift?”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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      How Taylor Swift Fans Got Each Other Eras Tour Tickets

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      After “historic demand” led to a Ticketmaster debacle, the singer’s most devoted online fans sprang into action to get each other into the Eras Tour at fair prices.When tickets for Taylor Swift’s first tour in nearly five years went on sale last November, Tina Studts, the mother of two young girls, thought she was well prepared.Like millions of others, Studts signed up for Ticketmaster’s “verified fan” program for early access, and she logged previous purchases of Swift merchandise that were supposed to provide a “boost.” She even watched hours of YouTube tutorials about how best to sign in and pick seats during a high-intensity drop.Her family had moved to Colorado from Kentucky in 2020, and adjusting amid a pandemic was tough, especially for her older daughter, Shannon, 15, who is autistic. But Swift had been Shannon’s “special interest” since elementary school, her mother said, and the vibrant fan culture around the pop star had provided a lifeline.With the holidays approaching, Studts knew that tickets to the stadium spectacle of Swift’s Eras Tour, which begins Friday in Glendale, Ariz., would give Shannon something to look forward to. Her daughter’s best friend from back home in Kentucky was even planning a surprise visit to Denver so they could all attend together.“It was the most obsessive thing I’ve ever done,” Studts, 51, said of training for her ticket mission. “I had this extreme self-imposed pressure to not disappoint my 15-year-old.”But as the Ticketmaster calamity unspooled that day, her hope dissipated. Studts waited and waited for eight hours at work, clicking around fruitlessly while fielding anxious texts from her daughter. The next morning, Shannon “didn’t even want to go to school because she was afraid of seeing people who had tickets,” Studts said.Their crushing experience matched the struggle of many Swifties — as the singer’s superfans are known — whose vocal anguish and collective online might, paired with Swift’s own public frustration, led to a canceled general sale and a congressional hearing. But what happened next was a welcome surprise to Studts and others who know pop fandom as a cutthroat (and pricey) battle royale — an arms race of haves and have-nots all jockeying for limited access.Instead of leaving one another to scrap it out on the official secondary market, where ticket prices were astronomical and scammers were salivating, some resourceful fans banded together, using their tight-knit community on social media to problem solve: From Twitter and Facebook to Tumblr and TikTok, on pages like @ErasTourResell and TS Tour Connect, volunteers created a network of spreadsheets, Google Forms and online bulletin boards to facilitate face-value sales and exchanges among fellow devotees.“The fandom can be kind of crazy,” said Amanda Jacobsmeyer, 29, the founder of the TS Fandom Fund, a Tumblr collective that seeks to address, however incrementally, economic inequality among Swifties. “But it really is a community and we look out for each other. With Ticketmaster just completely failing at their one job, people have really stepped up to make sure that actual fans are in the audience.”In a sea of bots, frauds and profit-seekers, most Swift fans involved are merely matchmaking and amplifying seemingly trustworthy deals for those in need, rarely touching the money or tickets themselves.Their only motive, Jacobsmeyer said, is altruistic enthusiasm: “We want Taylor to look out and see people who actually know the words to these songs, and we want to be surrounded by the people who make up our community, not just randoms.”Looking for tickets became “like my second job,” Studts said. “It felt like this puzzle to solve.” But with the help of the @ErasTourResell Twitter account, where tickets were vetted and announced by city, she was able to secure four seats with no markup in time to surprise her daughters on Christmas morning.“It’s really refreshing,” she said of the fan efforts. “I can’t believe that somebody would voluntarily spend this much of their time to make sure that we can get to the concerts. They just love seeing Taylor fans not getting screwed over by scammers and not being overcharged three or four times over.”Long a struggle for followers of the most popular live acts — I need a miracle, goes the ancient Grateful Dead fan prayer — landing hot concert tickets without taking out a second mortgage has only become more difficult amid rising prices and fees, post-pandemic demand and the continued consolidation of an industry that some lawmakers say is dominated by a monopoly. (The Justice Department is said to be investigating Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, the concert giant that merged with the ticketing behemoth in 2010.)Last month, amid extended hand-wringing about ticket prices, a leading Bruce Springsteen fanzine announced it would shut down after 43 years. To avoid a repeat of the Swift debacle, a more elaborately plotted set of staggered presales for Beyoncé’s new tour had rules and requirements resembling a brainteaser — with some fans opting still to travel to distant locations for easier, better deals. This week, it’s fans of the Cure feeling the pain.“It’s like a lottery to get stolen from now,” said Holly Turner, 26, who recalled spending just $23 — on the day of the concert — for floor tickets to her first Swift stadium show in 2011.By 2020, when Swift’s Lover Fest tour was planned to kick off, competition had turned steeper; Turner said she waited eight hours in a digital queue for those tickets, but had eventually gotten them. (The shows were later canceled because of Covid-19, only heightening demand for the Eras Tour, the singer’s first set of concerts since 2018.)Still, on Tumblr, the niche social network where many of Swift’s longest-serving and most loyal fans congregate, ticket release days were known to be a time of shared nervousness and then celebration. But this time around, joy was in short supply. Even among those who had managed to get Eras tickets, a sense of guilt prevailed.“Once the general sale got canceled, everyone just felt really, really distraught,” Turner said. “But the next day, after it set in, there was a lot of, ‘O.K., here’s what we’re going to do. Don’t give up hope.’”Using her sizable Tumblr following of some 20,000 Swifties, Turner’s TS Tour Connect page became a hub for those looking to sell tickets they could no longer use — at fair prices — to other loyalists. “I don’t have the resources to confirm if a ticket is real,” she said, “but what I can do, because I’ve been in the Tumblr community for so long, is make sure that they’re an actual fan who’s selling.”Risks abound regardless. Even as Jacobsmeyer was facilitating deals for others via the TS Fandom Fund, she lost $1,200 when she tried to buy tickets to attend Swift’s Nashville date with her sister from a Facebook group that turned out to be bogus.“It’s ripe for scammers, but it’s also been very ripe for showing the good sides of the community,” Jacobsmeyer said.Courtney Johnston, 24, of San Francisco, said she was inspired to start @ErasTourResell on Twitter after seeing similar pages dedicated to tickets for Harry Styles and other pop stars.She then recruited Channette Garay, 24, and Angel Richards, 27 — who met through the online fandom and are now dating and living together in Connecticut — to lend a hand. The three fans estimate that they are cumulatively spending more than 40 hours per week, in between work and school, sorting through ticket submissions and trying to verify them via screen recordings and confirmation emails before blasting the listings out to eager Swifties.With nearly 38,000 followers, the group has now helped arrange more than 1,300 deals and counting — a milestone they will celebrate when they meet up in Arizona to enjoy the opening night of the tour together.“I get to play a small part in someone getting tickets that they never thought they would get,” said Johnston, who plans to attend eight shows in all. “That’s really cool to me.”Garay and Richards, who have tickets to four tour dates, agreed. “At the end of the day,” Garay said, “honestly, we just love Taylor.” More

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      How Far Are Beyoncé Fans Traveling for the Renaissance Tour?

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      Members of the BeyHive are going to extraordinary lengths — some of them trans-Atlantic — to ensure they don’t miss the superstar on her coming world tour.How far would you go to see the winningest artist in Grammy history? Is it more or less than 5,800 miles?For Janny Nascimento, a 29-year-old English teacher in Brazil, missing Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour — the singer’s first solo tour since 2016 — was not an option. So she plunked down 850 euros, or about $900, for a pair of tickets to see her favorite artist on June 24 in Frankfurt, Germany.“I would do it again if I had to because this is the dream come true,” Ms. Nascimento said from her apartment in Campos dos Goytacazes, a town four hours northeast of Rio de Janeiro. Though she has never before traveled outside Brazil, “now I’m going through two continents to a place that I have never been to, a country where I don’t even speak the language,” she said.The announcement of the tour on Instagram last week immediately touched off a frenzy for tickets, with fans losing their minds with presale (and resale) anxieties. Chances to snag tickets before they went on sale to the general public were offered to members of Beyoncé’s official fan club and holders of certain credit cards through exclusive presale drops.But early in the registration process, Ticketmaster issued an ominous warning that “demand already exceeds the number of tickets available by more than 800 percent” in several cities, prompting some worried fans to consider an unlikely option: If I’m determined not to miss this tour, is it possible that the rational thing to do is cross an ocean for a concert?Bre Harper, 27, a creative partnerships manager at Spotify who lives in Los Angeles, realized her chances of getting tickets to a North American stop on the tour were slim to none.“I, with the rest of the internet, went on Ticketmaster, where you have to be verified as a fan,” Ms. Harper said, referring to restrictions on sales for U.S. tour dates.Ticketmaster Under ScrutinyThe ticketing giant has come under fire after it botched the rollout of tickets to Taylor Swift’s tour last year — a failure the company blamed on bots.Unhappy Customers: Fiascos involving Swift and Bad Bunny have made Ticketmaster the object of a significant amount of public discontent.Senate Hearing: Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster, came under attack from lawmakers in both parties, who called the company a monopoly while quoting lyrics from songs by Ms. Swift.Biden’s Proposal: Days after the Senate hearing, President Biden called for limits to be placed on the fees that companies like Ticketmaster can be charged for tickets to live entertainment.Under Investigation: The Justice Department is said to have opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation, which predates the latest debacles.“I did not make a Verified Fan account with Ticketmaster,” she added. “I just have a regular account. I didn’t feel like fiddling with the whole Verified Fan thing.”While scrolling on TikTok, Ms. Harper learned that she did not have to be verified to buy tickets to the European leg of the tour. She also noticed that tickets for European dates were often hundreds of dollars cheaper than comparable tickets in the United States, she said. When she asked her boyfriend if he would be willing to travel with her, he said yes.The only European city she could find with tickets available in the “Club Renaissance” standing section was Warsaw, Poland. Ms. Harper, who said she believed the 40-city tour could be the artist’s last, bought a pair of $475 tickets as quickly as she could.“She now has a life, a family,” Ms. Harper said. “I think this is going to be her last hurrah and I didn’t want to miss it.”Tickets to the tour, which is in support of Beyoncé’s seventh solo studio album, “Renaissance,” went on sale to members of the BeyHive fan club on Monday. Ticketmaster’s decision to require Verified Fan registration reflects one of the company’s most muscular attempts yet to thwart bots and stop scalpers from buying tickets and reselling them at absurd markups.Late last year, Ticketmaster was forced to cancel a planned general release of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour after an overheated presale period ended in chaos. Ms. Swift’s fans complained that tickets were being sold at preposterous markups of up to tens of thousands of dollars on sites like StubHub.The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster. Last month, during a nearly three-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, politicians painted the concert giant as a monopoly that hinders competition and harms consumers. Shortly after the announcement of the Renaissance World Tour, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued an ominous warning to Ticketmaster on Twitter.Ticketmaster, whose parent company’s president has acknowledged problems with the presale for Ms. Swift’s tour, did not immediately respond to questions on Friday.The tour is scheduled to begin on May 10 in Stockholm, cutting a path across Europe through June before heading to North America in July.Ms. Harper, a self-described military brat, said she had traveled through Europe extensively, but she had never been to Poland.“It’s not that frightening to me,” Ms. Harper said. “You only live once — let’s go!”Ms. Harper, who posted on Twitter about acquiring her tickets, said that, as a Black woman, she was nervous about only one thing.“I had a lot of people comment or quote my tweet and tell me that there are some racial issues in Poland currently,” she said. “That’s probably the only thing that I’m just a tad bit nervous about.”“But the BeyHive is so supportive,” she added, referring to the superstar’s legion of fans. “There are so many folks that are in my DMs saying that they live or they have relatives in Poland. They are already offering to help me with places to go, eat, and how to navigate the metro.”After she missed an opportunity to see Beyoncé in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, Ms. Nascimento was resolved not to let another chance go by. Although she doesn’t have a passport yet, she has already taken a photo for it.“I’m still struggling, looking at the credit card receipt,” Ms. Nascimento said. “I would do it again if I had to,” she added wistfully.“This is inspired by the album,” Ms. Nascimento said, her pink box braids pulled away from her face. “When ‘Break My Soul’ came out, I was in a very dark place in my life,” she said, “and it was like Beyoncé wrote this thinking about me.”“She knows that I’m struggling, she knows what’s going on,” Ms. Nascimento added. “She was like, release your job, release your mind, you know, let down your hair.” More

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      Ticketmaster Called a ‘Monopoly’ at Senate Hearing Over Taylor Swift Debacle

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      The Judiciary Committee, responding to the bungled sale of Taylor Swift concert tickets, heard the company apologize and its critics trace the problem to the industry’s lack of competition.Live Nation Entertainment, the concert industry giant that owns Ticketmaster, came under withering attack during a Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday, with committee members from both parties criticizing it for the botched sale of tickets to Taylor Swift’s latest tour and calling the company a monopoly that hinders competition and harms consumers.Over nearly three hours, senators pilloried a top Live Nation executive, Joe Berchtold, over the handling of Ms. Swift’s tickets last November and over longstanding allegations that the company badgers its competitors to win new business. Such bullying would be a violation of a Justice Department agreement that set conditions on the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster in 2010.“This is all the definition of monopoly,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota. “Live Nation is so powerful that it doesn’t even need to exert pressure. It doesn’t need to threaten. Because people just fall in line.”Some at the hearing went so far as to question whether the two companies, whose agreement with the Justice Department expires in 2025, should be broken up.Mr. Berchtold, Live Nation’s president and chief financial officer, acknowledged the problems with a presale for Ms. Swift’s tour, and apologized to the singer and her fans. When those tickets went on sale, millions of people were turned away. Technical problems also caused tickets to disappear from the online baskets of customers — whom Ticketmaster had approved through its Verified Fan system — as they were trying to buy them.At the hearing, both Republican and Democratic senators expressed concern about Live Nation’s dominance in the ticketing industry. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Berchtold largely attributed Ticketmaster’s failings to an assault from online bots: automated programs, run by scalpers, that seek to snatch up tickets before they ever make their way to consumers. That drew a largely skeptical response from the senators.“This is unbelievable,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said, with more than a hint of anger in her voice. “Why is it,” she added, “that you have not developed an algorithm to sort out what is a bot and what is a consumer?”Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, was even more blunt. “The way your company handled the ticket sales with Ms. Swift,” he said, “was a debacle.”The merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster united the world’s most powerful concert promoter and the biggest ticketing platform, creating a colossus without equal in the multibillion-dollar live music business.In 2019, the last full year unaffected by the Covid-19 pandemic for which Live Nation has reported data, the company put on more than 40,000 events around the world and sold 485 million tickets. It owns or otherwise controls more than 300 venues around the world, far more than any other player in the business.In part because of its bulk and global reach, Live Nation has long been the target of complaints from competitors, who contend that the company’s size, and its control of Ticketmaster, give it an unfair advantage.Jerry Mickelson, a longtime independent concert promoter in Chicago, told the senators that a common frustration among the market’s smaller players is that Live Nation can profit from concerts put on by rival promoters because it still makes money through its control of Ticketmaster. “Pepsi doesn’t earn money from Coke,” he said. “But our competitor, Live Nation, makes money from selling tickets to our concerts.”Objections to Live Nation’s business have grown louder since 2019, when the Justice Department said that the company had “repeatedly violated” the terms of its regulatory agreement, called a consent decree.Justice Department investigators said that Live Nation had threatened venues that it would withhold tours under the company’s control if those venues did not sign deals with Ticketmaster, in violation of a key provision in the decree. Live Nation did not admit any wrongdoing, but in early 2020 the Justice Department extended the decree by five years.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, was among those at the hearing who raised the question of whether Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster should be undone.“If the Department of Justice establishes violations of the consent decree,” he said, “then unwinding the merger ought to be on the table.”Mr. Berchtold pushed back against many of the accusations, saying that Live Nation does not threaten venues; that those venues hold a great deal of leverage in negotiating ticketing contracts; and that new entrants like SeatGeek, a rival ticketing platform, have kept Ticketmaster on its toes. According to various estimates cited by the senators, Ticketmaster controls the ticketing at 70 to 80 percent of major concert venues in the United States. Mr. Berchtold said Live Nation’s estimate is 50 to 60 percent and he attributed its market share to the quality of its product.A small number of people demonstrated outside the Senate office building during the hearing, some holding signs referencing the Taylor Swift ticket debacle. Kenny Holston/The New York Times“We believe ticketing has never been more competitive,” he said.At the hearing, called “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment,” witnesses included other players in the concert business who described great difficulties competing against Live Nation.Jack Groetzinger, the chief executive of SeatGeek, said that venues are afraid of losing Live Nation concert tours if they do not sign with Ticketmaster. He said that is an obstacle for smaller companies like his in winning new business — though SeatGeek has been one of the more successful upstarts in ticketing in recent years, signing major clients like the Dallas Cowboys and Jujamcyn Theaters, one of the major Broadway theater owners.The panel also included a musician, Clyde Lawrence, of a small New York band called Lawrence. Dressed in a black suit, and with a scruffy head of hair, he joked that he could only dream of the crushing ticket demand enjoyed by Ms. Swift. But he described frustrations in dealing with Live Nation, such as the backstage costs it charges musicians, and the opacity of ticket surcharges, for which his band gets nothing.He described a typical show, where the face value of the ticket was $30, plus $12 in fees. Yet out of that $42 paid by the consumer, $30 was eaten up by the venue, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and another $6 went to the band’s touring expenses. “So that leaves us with $6 for an eight-piece band, pretax,” he said, “and we also have to pay our own health insurance.”In his questioning, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, honed in on a facet of Ticketmaster’s business, the resale marketplace that exists seamlessly within its online ticket sales platform, “where you’re forcing everyone in the resale market to come into your ecosystem.”“This is how monopolies work,” Mr. Hawley added. “You leverage market power in one market to get market power in another market — and it looks like you’re doing that in, frankly, multiple markets.”Ms. Klobuchar, who called the hearing, said in a summation that some of the problems in ticketing, such as fighting bot traffic, could be dealt with through legislation. But she said that the larger question, of whether to take action against Live Nation as a monopoly, was best handled by the Justice Department. The near-unanimous criticism from lawmakers on Tuesday may put pressure on the Justice Department to act.The most remarkable aspect of the hearing may have been the display of consensus by a panel often split along partisan lines. Mr. Blumenthal summed that up with a mocking salute to Mr. Berchtold.“I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement,” he said. “You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause.” More

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      Ticketmaster Under the Magnifying Glass

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicLast year, Ticketmaster was the object of a significant amount of consumer discontent. There was the confusing rollout of tickets for the upcoming Taylor Swift stadium tour. In Mexico City, countless people with valid tickets were denied entry to a Bad Bunny concert. And the rising roots-rock singer-songwriter Zach Bryan made Ticketmaster a focus of his public ire.If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Ticketmaster has long been the target of — or perhaps the cause of — widespread unhappiness. High prices and fees? Blame Ticketmaster. A resale/scalping market that’s even more financially taxing? Blame Ticketmaster. And so on, and so on. Artists as big as Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen have taken on the giant, and mostly been forced to stand down, owing to the company’s reach and power.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the recent spate of kerfuffles that have increased scrutiny of Ticketmaster, the artists who have pushed back against the ticketing giant and the seeming intractability of the issues plaguing the ticket marketplace.Guest:Ben Sisario, The New York Times’s music industry reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More