Last month, US regulator the FTC and seven states sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster for “engaging in illegal ticket resale tactics”. Now that lawsuit is bringing fresh heat for the companies from two senators: Marsha Blackburn and Ben Ray Luján. They have written to Live Nation’s president and CFO Joe Berchtold with some pointed questions about the issues raised by the lawsuit – harking back to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023.
“When you appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023 following the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster meltdown, you repeatedly assured the committee that Ticketmaster does everything in its power to stop bots and scalpers,” they wrote. “When pressed on the issue of cybersecurity protections, you seemed dumbfounded and argued that LiveNation spent over a billion dollars investing in site protections against bots. It is astounding that you would make such a claim while actively colluding with scalpers and bad actors to extort the American public.”
The senators included six questions about Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s conduct in their letter, with a deadline for answers from Berchtold of Tuesday 14 October – tomorrow.
