6 Ways to Fix the Broken Concert Ticketing System | CPT PPP Coverage

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It’s up to the DOJ to decide whether to prise apart Live Nation, observes Erickson. Congress could act as well, a route that Erickson believes would carry additional authority in whatever court battles are likely to follow. A bill that Senator Elizabeth Warren plans to reintroduce soon would streamline the unwinding of mergers. Some states are also considering legislation that would impose a strict new antitrust standard that could make it easier for legislators to intervene on potential monopolies at the state level.

“Ticketmaster-Live Nation is driving many of the most frustrating changes happening in live music,” Erickson asserts, citing the company’s alleged influence on fees, cuts taken out of artists’ merch sales, and unfavorable artist contracts. “Controlling that much of the industry is basically a license to be bullies.”

Keep resellers in check

Reining in Ticketmaster’s consolidated market power would address one set of problems. But there’s also the issue of scalping, which reduces the pool of available tickets on the primary market and introduces markups that are sometimes sky-high. Fortunately, scalpers’ most egregious activities could be curbed without harming fans, artists, promoters, or venues. 

Fielding Logan, head of touring at the country-centric artist management agency Q Prime South, wants to see an outright ban on scalping. “Make ticket scalping illegal, level the playing field, and get back to where it’s just normal fans competing for the same Taylor Swift tickets,” he says. In all likelihood though, as with other semi-licit industries throughout the ages, it’s difficult to imagine a prohibition having the intended effect even if it were politically feasible. Outlawing secondary sales would also make it difficult for legitimate buyers who are unable to attend the event to recoup the cost of their ticket. 

Short of outlawing ticket resales altogether, Logan backs another proposal: Ensure that artists are allowed to make tickets non-transferable if that’s what they decide for their fans. It’s an idea that Ticketmaster has also supported in a blog post, and Erickson says most of the artist community is on board too. To avoid resellers, Pearl Jam made tickets non-transferable for its 2022 tour (except in New York and Colorado, where transferability is currently required by law).

When buyers can’t attend a show for one reason or another, the best option is probably a “fan-to-fan marketplace” where tickets can be resold at face value, ideally without fees. AXS and Ticketmaster each currently offer their own versions of this concept, the latter of which Pearl Jam used. But the issue of ticket transferability is one where the interests of defeating scalpers and those of scaling back Ticketmaster’s market dominance may be at odds. As Krista Brown, a senior policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project who has written about Ticketmaster points out, restricting resales of tickets to a marketplace operated by the company itself would only increase its hold on the buying and selling of tickets in general. “Obviously that’s helpful to Ticketmaster because they already capture the largest market share of primary sales, and it’s useful for them to keep everyone in their ecosystem,” Brown says. “Once you allow transferability, it can allow other services in.”