Live Nation legal chief Dan Wall used congressional testimony to counter the Federal Trade Commission’s claims that Ticketmaster is enabling ticket resellers to jack up prices, telling senators the company has “walked the walk” on anti-broker initiatives.
Wall was one of the witnesses at a Wednesday (Jan. 28) hearing held by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation titled, “Fees Rolled on All Summer Long: Examining the Live Entertainment Industry.” A riff on the Kid Rock song “All Summer Long,” the hearing also featured testimony from Rock himself, as well as Ticket Policy Forum director Brian Berry and Colorado Independent Venue Association (CIVA) chair David Weingarden.
The Senate proceeding came in the wake of a bombshell deceptive practices lawsuit filed this fall by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), alleging that Live Nation subsidiary Ticketmaster has quietly propped up ticket brokers in order to collect fees on its secondary resale platform. Ticketmaster denies all wrongdoing and has argued that the case is a massive misuse of the BOTS Act, a 2016 law that aims to quash ticket scalping.
Wall reiterated this stance during his congressional testimony on Wednesday, saying Live Nation “consistently stands with artists, with venues and with fans and in opposition to ticket brokers and other resale marketplaces.” He pointed out that Ticketmaster banned brokers from operating multiple accounts after the FTC lawsuit, and that the company uses the “most sophisticated defenses out there” to fight bots.
This didn’t appear to satisfy lawmakers, though. Wall had a tense exchange with Commerce Committee chair Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who said she was “quite disappointed” with what she read in the FTC complaint — specifically an internal Ticketmaster email in which an executive said the companies “turn a blind eye as a matter of policy” to brokers exceeding ticket purchasing limits.
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“You have emphatically denied that this conduct had any sort of malfeasance, but I want you to answer: why would you have to turn a blind eye, as your executive put it, if there was no wrongdoing that was taking place?” Blackburn asked Wall.
“I think that was taken very much out of context, senator,” responded Wall. “Our actions speak louder than anything else. We showed up, we walked the walk. We improved our defenses. Our bot defenses are second to none in the world.”
Wall also faced questioning during the hearing about the Department of Justice’s ongoing antitrust lawsuit that seeks to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Asked by Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) whether the companies operate a monopoly, Wall answered with an emphatic “no” and reiterated Live Nation’s arguments in court that the DOJ has miscalculated its market share.
The other hearing witnesses, meanwhile, all voiced their support for the DOJ’s efforts to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Rock — clad in a black t-shirt, cow-print lined vest and cowboy hat — said the two live music behemoths “fooled” the government into approving their merger back in 2010.
But Rock said splitting up Live Nation and Ticketmaster won’t alone solve the problem of exorbitantly high ticket prices. He argued that the real solution is legislation imposing a 10% cap on ticket resale prices.
“I’m a capitalist, I’m a deregulation guy, but there’s no other way around this but to put a price cap on this,” testified Rock, who joined Trump in the Oval Office last year for the signing of an executive order ramping up BOTS Act enforcement.
