Senator Amy Klobuchar speaks about Taylor Swift Ticketmaster Fiasco

To put it mildly, last month’s Taylor Swift ticket debacle once again put the spotlight on Ticketmaster’s market dominance. The chaotic pre-sale and subsequent cancellation of the public sale of the singer’s “Eras Tour” raised issues about whether the company was exercising its power in a manner detrimental to the public interest.

On Nov. 16, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, sent an open letter to Michael Rapinoe, CEO of Ticketmaster’s flagship, Live Nation, in which she said she had raised a string of of specific questions about the company’s business practices, prompted by its “serious concerns about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers”.

The following week, Klobuchar and ratings member Mike Lee (R-UT) announced that the subcommittee would hold a hearing to “examine the lack of competition in the ticket industry”. She later added via Twitter, “This goes beyond Taylor Swift. It’s about a monopoly that can charge higher prices, hide fees, and fail to provide quality service because it doesn’t need to. I’m having a bipartisan hearing with Senator Lee because where there is no competition, Americans pay.” The price “.

Klobuchar has long expressed reservations about the consequences of the 2010 Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. She took an active part during the February 2009 subcommittee hearing on the then-proposed deal. In her opening statement, she asked whether allowing the two companies to join forces would mean that “anti-consumer practices would go unchecked and not be dealt with at the expense of consumers.” [and] Party goers.

In last week’s letter to Rapino, Klobuchar referenced the earlier hearing, noting that you “appeared as a witness and pledged to “develop an accessible, one-stop platform that can deliver … tickets.” And you said you were “confident that this plan will work.” Your confidence was misplaced.”

Although the Department of Justice eventually approved the merger, it did so in conjunction with a consent decree that sought to limit the company’s ability to abuse its market position. Ten years later, the Department of Justice agreed to extend the ordinance through 2025, with some modifications, reflecting its position that Live Nation and Ticketmaster “has repeatedly and threateningly stipulated the provision of Live Nation for live concerts upon the venue’s purchase of Ticketmaster’s ticketing services, retaliating against venues that chose to use of competing ticketing services — all in violation of the express language of the ordinance.”

In her latest book, Antitrust: Taking Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age, Klobuchar describes the passage of Save Our Stages, the $15 billion relief bill she co-authored with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to help music venues Independent living affected by COVID-19. She asserted that the legislation is “specifically targeting aid for smaller venues and cutting out giant Ticketmaster”.

While the date and details of the hearing have not been announced, Klobuchar spoke with diverse to share her views on the climate for antitrust enforcement, potential ticket legislation and why Swifties are like Grangers.

Last month I asked Michael Rapino a series of questions about Ticketmaster’s current practices. Did you receive any answers?

We’ve had some answers, and we’re glad we did. We also told them we needed some follow ups. So we’re working with them on those.

As they said publicly, they should have been better at Taylor Swift’s ticket sales. We know that, but we think it’s not enough. I think we need to get to the bottom of the problems in the ticketing industry. This is part of the reason for a hearing.

I view the hearing as a dual purpose: First, to get information, since the DOJ is conducting a massive investigation into Ticketmaster in general, everything from vertical integration with Live Nation ownership and ownership of arenas to ticket prices. We don’t know what they are investigating. We know the consent decree is about violations of telling people they have to use Ticketmaster, but we don’t know if that was what the investigation meant.

Hearings can be beneficial because you get information and witnesses are under oath and this informs investigations. This is the first thing. The second thing is that he knows we.

As I look for solutions here, it’s also important to get the resources we need for our antitrust enforcers, who are now shadows of their former self. We have an invoice for the merger fee change [The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3843%5D that would add over $100 million to our agencies. It’s passed through House and I’m hoping to get it done.

I’m looking to rejuvenate our antitrust laws in general. One of the things that you could do on both discriminatory conduct and mergers is make it easier to prove up on major mergers or major monopolies — putting the burden on the companies to show things are not anti-competitive, as opposed to putting it all on the government.

Meanwhile, something else that’s very important is specific legislation about transparency in ticket sales. We’re working on bipartisan legislation on that with some basic disclosures and some common-sense rules. I’m working on that with a number of other senators and it’s specific to the ticketing industry.

The DOJ has already had two opportunities to step in and declare that the union of Live Nation and Ticketmaster has created a vertical monopoly that fosters an anticompetitive environment — particularly since the merged company owns and operates venues, while also managing artists. Do you think DOJ got it wrong both times, or do you think something has changed that merits another look?

It could be both. Clearly, they got something wrong because of where we are today — there’s no doubt about it. Whether it was a lack of enforcement of the one particular consent decree or whether they just should not have allowed the merger, there were big problems. I asked about it at the time during the hearing.

But secondly, we know that we’ve seen violations. In 2019, the Justice Department went to court, got the consent decree extended, appointed an independent monitor and put in place penalties that could be doled out.

I think the other thing is that people are starting to see the effects of these monopolies. Who would have guessed that Taylor Swift fans would be advocating for changes to antitrust laws? They’re the modern-day Grangers [the 19th century farmers movement pushing back against monopolies]And they do it on the Internet.

We need this kind of movement. I’m starting to see this everywhere from cat food to bins, in the tech and pharmaceutical markets. There have been a lot of mergers and so there has been some pushback from the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.

I’m thinking of AT&T, where they had not only horizontal integration with all the phone companies, but also vertical integration by owning all the devices. When that collapsed, we saw a lot of innovation in the cell phone market, and we saw long-distance prices drop. So this kind of unbundling used to happen in the past with big industries.

You might be the first person to compare Swifties to Grangers.

Oh, I’m just trying to interest your readers with a modern look. (Laughter.)

I think it’s quite relevant, though. Looking back through history, the way it happened was you had presidential candidates like Woodrow Wilson with songs about antitrust because the two major parties were trying to outdo each other to prove that they could get something done.

That’s because the populists, the farmers’ unions, you name it, were running against these funds because of the same thing – the prices, the lack of competition for their goods and how they got the goods to market. There were problems and problems with transactions. Back then it was railroads and things like that – now it’s the Internet.

It took a while to get us there, though. When the Senate was not elected, the members were often chosen by the boxes, who could sit there like in those old cartoons, staring at the Senate and everyone else acting for them. [Direct election of senators became mandatory following the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.] In the end, the situation with the boxes got out of control so much that the residents went crazy.

Then in the Progressive Era, everyone started trying to outbid each other, Republicans included, to see how they could get things done. This is the age we have to reach again in the modern era. I don’t think we should be surprised that it didn’t happen overnight, but we do need people to step up.

Not everyone realizes that Ticketmaster’s customers aren’t concert-goers – they’re the venues. Do you think this has hindered some of the previous attempts at regulation because everything is complicated by self-interest and self-protection?

What happens with monopolies is that the people who hurt them are afraid of them, too. They do not want to advance because they think they will be corrupted. I’ve had countless companies come to me and meet with our employees about App Store issues and technical issues. Some of these companies are big companies that are afraid to go public because they think they will be punished.

I think Stephen Colbert pointed it out better when I was on his show talking about the book. I’ve been going on and on about some of these issues with Google and tech companies. Then when I was complaining about him, he got this funny look on his face, pauses, looks at the screen and declares his love for Google.

What he was saying was “please don’t mess with me.” He was doing it in a funny way because that’s the way people think.

It is one of the problems facing stadiums. If they overstep their skates and get out and complain, they can be permanently spoiled. Revenge was one of the issues that came up in the consent decree.

I imagine you’ve heard quite a few stories while working on Save Our Stages. On a more positive note, can you share a memorable moment looking back on the process of securing this legislation?

I’ve taken Save Our Stages with Senator John Cornyn [R] Texas – Thank God for the country [music]. We pulled together after hearing from Dyna Frank in my state, who heads the National Independent Venue Association and owns First Avenue. We all realized that those [independent] The venues were the first to close and were the last to open because you can’t stand a mosh pit in the middle of a pandemic, let alone an orchestra pit.

So we got an alliance together. It was all very positive, based on people’s little theatres. The Fargo Theater in North Dakota got Kevin Cramer on the bill, a conservative Republican. Mitch McConnell got the bill. Then we managed to get the coalition together and ended up passing a bill that included the largest investment in the arts in American history – $16 billion! She kept many places afloat.

As a result, one of my favorite moments of my career as a senator is that I got a star on the wall on First Avenue—next to Alice Cooper and five minutes from Prince. The problem is, they were drawing it in the middle of a blizzard to celebrate the moment the bill passed and the ink froze. So he only said “Amy” for four months. [Laughter] But it was fun to finally go back to places, from Children’s Theater to CHanassen Dinner Theatre.