and demand. for the mar marketing and resale of tickets to sports competitionsld be but it is not about one dominant market player of the primary market this does allow them the ability to le through service to the exclusivity requirements and that are ultimately borne by consumers. a debate is occurring over whatins when they purchase

a ticket. as some woulds leasing or renting a space in a venue and that is subject to terms and conditions. in our opinion that logic rests on the misguided assumption that the venue. ask anyone attending a jaguars for that matter where they are going and they will reply i'm going the game, or i'm going to take my daughters to see harry styles. they would not reply with i'mg to the bank field this afternoon or just taking myids to amway arena. the stadium might have a lifespan of 50 y individual purchase a commodity with a much more limited lifespan a hours. this distinction in our opinion is vital to the event of ticketing space. over the last several years we heard the term consumer welfare standard uttered much more standard is still applicable in innovation economy, whether it should be replaced with some other form of suggestive measures and at the age of the tech platforms what itsk you all as we

conduct the hearing toe in this area we contend this consumerelined and reflective of the issues and challenges within industry. those representing the dominant player would contend that their growth has allowed them to innovate ands that greatly benefit consumers. a few milli would respond this is why we can't have nice things. perspective, the issue isn't the se. that merely revealed how the lack of competitionhas corroded innovation and distorted i would ask suppose a robust vibrant and market for ticketing had been allowed to evil and innovate last 20 years. with the taylor swift crash have oc course, but absolutely one worth l conclude my remarks with a call to u.s. policymakers on in this arena consumer welfare is very clear to define and there are actual harms to consumers anticompetitive practices. thank you and i appreciate the opportunity to be with you all

today. >> thank y very much. thank you chair senators klobuchar and members of the committee it here today for the american antitrust institute's competition and live entertainment.we applaud the senate lawmakers for turning their attention to a serious competition issue that hurts concertgoers, artists the live entertainment industry. there are a few points and policy recommendations that i would like to highlightwq live nation ticketmaster's is an example of on the one hand the mode of standard oil. and on the other a 21st century digital player platforms dominating an ever widening swath of itsominance up and down the c incentive on the ability to limit competition to the concert aside this includes exc promoters and venues in digital ticketing is includes excluding ticket resellers and that have the secondary

customers pay the price for these monopoly acts with higher ticketees, lower quality, less choice innovation. artists who lack the power of lose out. a lengthy investigation concluded in 2020eatedly violated the requirement of the consent decree. unfortunately rather than seeking an effective structural doj simply amended to some of the language into the consent decree and extended for another five and a half years. at to change live nation ticketmaster's incentive. the current doj has recognized behavioral remedy that runs counter to the company's pursue new enforcement actions to obtain effective structural release. this should be a challenge under section seven of the clayton act

or the monopolization case underof the sherman act. separating the ticket and venues would eliminate the incentives to stifle competition and reducing ticketmaster through spinoffs would address the ticketmasas competition in secondary ticketing. protecting consumers artists in into small arrivals from the ticketmaster's harmful conduct will require multiple policy tools including strong antitrust live nation ticketmaster and legislative action. urge enforcers and wall makers to consider three majorhe live nation ticketmaster monopo first, consider standards that enable the agency to challenge the mergers and if is effectively horizontal. standard in section seven of the clayton act is designed to t may enhance the market power and lead to we currently have a structural presumption for the we badly need. either through antitrust guidelines that get adopted by

the court. support more vigorous antitrust enforcement with le strengthen and clarify the antitrust laws. debate o a leading example. the bill would among other things for mergers and strengthened the conduct by dominant firms. such reforms would reduce the formidable burdens on the government for bringingpolization and murder cases. finally, consider the merits of an oversight regime access to the transparency into ticketing. at the can engage in practices designed to sell preference such as to the proprietary ticketing the problems may require establishing rules of the road additional ticketing platforms. such legislation has b state and federal level. thank you for thetunity to testify today. and i look forward to your questions. much. and last but not least will say looking at your testimony ahead time, i am particularly that perhaps while

you were not artists yet on the taylor swift and bruce springsteen so we do hope one day to be big enough%" a ticketing website. with that, i turn that it will get as big laugh. good morning senators and thank you for inviting us t have had in years. this is cohen and we are two of the age the band from new york city. before telling you more about who we arent to clarify who we are not. we are not lawyers or econosts were experts in antitrust policy. senator klobucha level of acts like taylor swift or bruce springsteen do hope to be big enough one day to crash the ticketing site but we are seasoned artists we have toured extensith empty bars and working our way up to headlining sold out shows for people into seeing the music chart on the top 40 while we became musicians because of the passion for ki needed to embrace the

entrepreneurial aspects of as artists. ever since we started touring we tried to be even including the lyric live nation is a latest album. whether or not it the legal definition of the monopoly is someone else's call make. while discuss those dynamics in depth in our written testimony most of the issues the fact that live nation ticketmaster acceed three things at the same time, the promoter, the venue and the ticketing company. let'sou just played a show. when an artist plays these venues they are required to use live nation as the promoter. to simply advertise the promoter coordinates and pays the upfront costs to p venue and striking a deal with the performer. share of the profits, we should be incentives. to keep costs low while ensuring experience. live nation modeling acting as a also at the owner and/or operator it

complicates these incentives. at the end of the show made that evening ended due to the control are practically no leverage in negotiating them. if they want to take 10% of the revenues and call it a facil if want to charge $30,000 they can and have. and if they want to charge $250 for a stack of ten clean towels, they can and have. once the costs some of to the live nation subsidiaries are taken into split between live nation and the band. in the world where the promoter and the venue are not affiliated with each other we can trust the promoter will look to getbest deal from the venue. however in this case the promoter and the part of the same corporate entity so thesentially live nation negotiating to pay for itself. does that seem were listed at $30 into the to about $12 of each ticket. but in this type is hypothetical show they didn't. the van paid $42 because

ticketmaster tacked on for the record it's been as high with promotion if an artist plays at a live nation venue, they have no have the show ticketed by ticketmaster. to be absolutely zero say or visibility and how much the fees will be. we find out the same way as everybody e,cketmaster once the show already goes on sale.ase you're wondering no we do not get a cent of the so over the $42 the family t, received 12 but whereas the costs were already covered at t we still need to pay for our touring costs and in of the earnings that are used to cover expenses leaves us with six dollars pretax and we also have to pay our own to be fair, many of the issues we've addressed here are n to the live nation ticketmaster. we have a number of experiences the venues are often filled with hard-working and all of the venues have onet is a game

changer.jokes aside we truly do not see live nation is the enemy. they aregest player in the game that is stacked against us as artists and fans as well. ultimately the current state of th lots of questions. why is it that all of before the profit point yet hours, the artist don't. why is there so little transparency as to what line items such as faci to words? why is it a standard for live take a 20% commission on our merchandise sales receive a cent of their ancillary revenues like and parking. finally, why ia exorbitantly high ticket fees without any industries the government has mandated caps on various types junk fees. we look forward to seeing the questions getthank you for your time and we hope to see some of you at one of the like to come, let me know and i will throw you on the guest list. >> thank you very muc to pay but we appreciate that, i'm going

to turn over fnd of questions. ck with you for a minute because you made it clear that you do not set the ticket price. and he doesn't have anything to do with of the ticketo does set the ticket price? >> that is the thi most surprised to year in the speech, we asked the venues in advance they often say that is a ticketmastero the fees, we do set the ticket prices, the base have a say in setting for sure, but the added ticketmaster service fees we have no say into the venuesaim. >> do you want to add anything to that? >> the band sets the ticket price. the service fee level is set by the control the venue. do you do you have approximately -- >> 4 united states. live nation operates

appr 5% of the >> [inaudible] >> no, sir they are generally not the biggest. they tend venues the arenas for stadiums controlled by the sports teams or the owners of the sports >> you had an experience at barclays did you not come in terms of the opportunity for take over the venue that had been controlled ticketmaster. >> "the new york times" reported a few weeks we took over the ticketing for the centerkeley centers all the market increase in the number of concerts from live nation that were sent to that versus the historical outages. so earlier last year the center came to us and said we would like to keep usingticketing basketball, but we want to be able to use concerts. we looked into it and we couldn't to work ways amicably. >> so they used their power of the marketplace to diminish the number of acts and the venue

decided that they have ticketmaster? >> there was certainly the market increase in the number of fter they decided to move>> is that true? >> i believe what "the new york times" indicated was anothernue opened in the marketplace so now you had a two venuenot going to madison square garden and that the number of shows from all the major promoters went down as a result of that increed competition. i've not heard of any allehanged in any way our booking of concerts matter that i watch very closely given the profile new york market and i understand every decision about every show wheret was placed and why. we have records determining that in no case was there any retaliation in the placement of >> your last word on barclays? >> i would note the report in 2019 found numerous instances of

live nation and threatening and retaliating against the venues once they moved away from ticketmaster and in one case, the live nat the venue that they would go nuclear if they the threat is really and it's been documented and happens venues. >> he defended his position one element of saying it was a battle of the box. have youo tha phenomena? >> the ticketing companies one of the things they are supposed to do is have solutio the leading ticket company not to be able to handle is pretty you can't blame the bots for what happened to taylor swift. ts more to the story that you're not >> ms. bradish you probably heard or read in the testimony three to be done, which included all in pricing of tickets fighting deceptive urls as an example,and creating a civil action

under the bots act. any reaction to those suggestiont we have been talking about today which is the antitrust problem and fact that live nation and ticketmaster because of its power has the incentive to do things to exclude competi markets up and down the supply chain for live appreciate the suggestions. many of them may be good ideas but fact that live nation and ticketmaster is a monopoly because that is the incen competition. >> thank you madam chair. >> thank you senator durbin. next up, senator >> thank you madam chair. i'd like to start with you. back in 2010 thent of justice against the proposed merger between ticketmaster and live nationer things ticketmaster had at the time and 83% market share with no competitor, no single competitor having more than 4% of market.

it also alleged that for its part it was ticketmaster's biggest customer and with the leading concert promoter at time of course it also alleged live nation had become competing directly with ticketmaster. rising over a very short period of time to 16% of the market share in a meteoric rise, why did the departmentce settle what seems to be a strong case that appears head to head competition with the would you agree what we have here is not a shortco necessarily about the antitrust law, b the error perhaps gross neglig them? >> i think there are two elementsld take the dissent degree rather than pursue t court. obviously the case in court involves risk and the fact is to pursue the merger in court and recent experience backs that up is difficult to win a vertical

merger. but it's hard to given pursue the vertical merger case. so that will many cases hesitant to do that. comes up here is the need for witnesses and the court case. there is a pervasive dominant firm where venues and independent consequences that history has since then suggested is the case, they have to testify in court and to get someone take that risk is not an easy ask. >> if i'm nothey've pitched this as a horizontal merger didn't identified? >> up when there's a component, the remedy, t vertical part of the issue. >> the consent decree includes the investiture and prohibitions onime, on-time the on time the ticketing

services and concert promotions. do you want to say anything about how those have worked practice and why? that culminated in the modifications of the consent in fact this was repeatedly violated. there were six instances but also it pointed to the pervasive environment of fear of retaliation. and as a result, it shows whenves to act in a particular way the consent sn to stop them from doing that. >> i that the department of justice alleged these issues in 2019, which led to our decis to extend the decree. we didn't seen as the defending series of retaliation or our business practice. it goes against ourçn and the idea that we would ever put our interest ahead of theirs. so we were comfortable extending

th d mentions, there were several things that chang because we have different interpretations and one of the things we've done as an instance where venues are seeking the concert agreement into annated that so there can't be any instance perception of threats or retaliation associated with of request. so we simply that from our service along with the establishmenke sure that any venue employee or others could report issues. >> is it accurate to say that at live nation at a minimum was a and time of the merger. >> to say live nation wasompetitor and likely very cap competitor? >> i would say that live nation at the time was findings very difficult to build its one of the driving motivations to the ticketmaste that it wasn't

going to successfully build its own system a it sought to find one that could serve its needs. they have tickets and they did rise tonce in six months. we will get to that. thank you madam chair. >> i will start with you. former antitrust attorney studying these markets do youagree that the ticketing market was moreer was completed with >> especially where you hav a potential entrant showing the ability to increase the marke and with great kind of pressure that you would want have to make sure they act in a competitivee loss of that is the loss ofcompetition. >> we have heard serious concerns from artists promoters, use the

ticketing servicelain the fact that t has 80% of the major venues contracted in the.? >> it is absolutely in our policy to not pressure, threaten gainst the venues by using the content is a part of the ticketi >> mr. michelson have you seen live nation leading concert promoter to pressure venues to they able to do that? >> when speaking with people thatr own or manage venues, their biggest fear is if they leave ticketmaster,ose content. so whether it is said or not it if i don't use ticketmaster i'm not going to get all the shows that i wou like to have. and by the way, if you look at the difference between the target center in minneapolis and of the energy center in st. paul, the targetter target center is

ticketed by access and the excel r is ticketed by ticketmaster. look a that play excel and you will see they far exceeded the number of shows that play target and when you look and break it down a little further most of the shows that live nation shows and they bring very fewe access controlled venue of the target center. >> thanks local nation eliminates by locking venues into the multiyear contracts with her three years five years, seven years if you t up 80% of the major concert there room for one of your competitors to get in the >> yes senator. first i would note the the 2008 department of justice study and we shares substantially lower than that. >> how much lower? >> a variety of ways we've estimated the market depending on what you include we believe the market share will be somewhere 50 to keep going.

>> i will absolutely acknowledge that standard practice of venues in the united states that owned and maximize the value of the ticketing rights they long-term exclusive agreements with ticketing companies. those tend to last to five years on average. i would notesp indication of thecompetitiveness is first with almost every contract renewal we more of the money gets accrued to the venues as opposed to the primary ticketing provider which would be one indicator of competitive marketplace. a second i would note the success adding roughly 15% as primary ticketing clients showed the level movement. exclusive contracts shut out competitors? can't guard anyone else, what are you going to >> exactly and i think it is a

standard given that the longer the exclusivity in the the risk of the competitive fact. the fact that they are able to get this length of something about their market power. it makesfor a newer entrance to get into the market if everybody is already up. >> do you think that, to go to anive nation's concert promotion business into the fact that it harder for you to c ticketing? typically we will go with a prospective client and show the technology and they will get it's going to make the experience better for their fans and allow them to run their business better and then they start to think about the threat and they will discussions will often close at have heard or threatened in a way that t will lose concerts if they move away from ticketmaster and one otherngote that is scary on that last of the

oversight and what recently we have seen ticketmaster moving from five years which seems to be the st of the contract industry toe turned a lot of things down so that if there is more pressure t of these decade-long deals so there's not a lot of time. going to be very hard to change. eek that even harder. that's what they've been pushing for recently. >> mr. lawrence what was the amount of your tickets some of the highest ones you had recently were fees? a 50% or closer to 50% fee added top. we have seen outlandish numbers like we had a show last spring wher on top of therice and we have no say until it goes on sale. >> you heard mr. lawrence. which we all know exists. we would be kidding ourselves if doesn't what would you do to reduce theseees? >> the fees are set up by they are

consistent with the other venues in the marketplace and cover the cost of the oper venues. >> mr. lawrence wants to >> we definitely ask venues before almost every show what isthe ticket fee going to be, both great and they certa fees. i don't know who is doing the fees to the venues and they say not only do we not it is, we don't even know what it is it can't tell you what to be. >> last wordranow what the fees are is that right? >> absolutely. the market can't work well without transparency.there's been transparency. okay with that senator cornyn. >> thank you very much. appreciate all the witnessesbeing here. concerning st to reflect a couple of years back during the height of the pandemic we wondered of these venues survive including

in my state in to see the work congress did would set the stage as he and other support senator kbuchar had a positive impact on preserving ma of these especially smaller venues and making it pos the small businesses which i guess you w small business and continue to provide these venues. i think what we have heard today does cry out for some response by congress, but candidly, i am not sure the antitrust laws are the best tool in the toolbox we will be talkingor near a couple of statements. you said you have an artist first business model and then you later said you would put your interests ahead of

theirs. is that your testimony? proach of the business. culturally, we believe it is stage and letting them connect with their fans and we believe that if that and consistently act that way then we will have a long and successful business working with artist and providing them services. >> i guess without the artists you wouldn't h business. >> that's correct. >> has that been your experience that live nation never puts their inte ohey have an artist first business model? >> i think generally when we show up to play a show, the people that work at the venue absolutely try to put up the best concert. i think that the places where sometimes maybe you like it's not artist first is just the infrastructure of the way someeals with the artists when you look at the settlement sheet at the end of who gets paid wine items where we have no say in setting the prices of those thi yet some of them are live nation directly setting tngs that they are paying to other

entities that they might which directly impact the profit pool for which the a has been derived. those are the moments where i not artist first is to say but those are the moments where it not truly aligned in our incentives. >> for your band out of aickecalifornia.