Photo Credit: Claudio Schwarz
Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary are staring down the possibility of class certification in a years-old lawsuit submitted by allegedly shortchanged ticketing customers.
Judge George Wu just recently finalized a tentative ruling on the plaintiffs’ class certification push – albeit under seal, with the appropriate document emailed to the involved parties.
As such, we don’t know for certain whether all manner of U.S. consumers will be allowed to join the high-stakes suit, which is accusing Live Nation/Ticketmaster of leveraging an alleged live-sector monopoly to suppress competition en route to charging “supracompetitive” ticketing fees.
But according to legal trade Courthouse News, the tone of a related in-person hearing suggested that Judge Wu “was likely to grant the motion.” And for Live Nation/Ticketmaster, approval would be a decidedly big deal.
Back in August, the plaintiffs’ counsel moved to obtain class certification for all U.S.-based customers who, between 2010 and the present, “directly purchased a primary ticket and paid associated fees for primary ticketing services for an event at a major concert venue in the United States from Ticketmaster or one of its affiliated entities.”
“Common proof shows that Defendants’ anticompetitive conduct harmed millions of consumers by inflating Ticketmaster’s primary ticketing service fees to supracompetitive levels nationwide, which led to virtually every consumer paying an illegal overcharge to Defendants,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.
Bearing those points in mind, Live Nation’s vehement opposition to certification probably won’t come as a surprise.
Without diving too far into the promoter’s pushback here, the company identified the proposal’s “most glaring flaw” as an alleged “failure to establish a reliable, class-wide method for proving antitrust impact in the face of the venue-by-venue variation inherent in Ticketmaster’s individualized negotiations.”
It’ll be worth tracking the court’s class-certification determination – and Live Nation’s response – moving forward. Meanwhile, we previously covered a variety of other interesting angles, chief among them the enforceability of Ticketmaster’s arbitration clause.
Closer to the present, this week delivered an order reassigning the case to a new magistrate judge; the previous magistrate, citing a family member’s employment with Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), had recused himself.
While AEG isn’t a party to the case, it is one of several intervenors – with others including SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, Etix, and Creative Artists Agency, to name a few. Though the Ticketmaster rivals have seemingly filed under seal, one needn’t stretch the imagination to infer the nature of their comments.
Lastly, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are still fending off separate antitrust allegations, some stemming from the Eras Tour fiasco.
Also underway are the government’s Live Nation complaints: The Justice Department’s antitrust suit is now expected to receive a final pretrial conference on February 17th, while the FTC’s distinct action is in the process of resuming following a shutdown-prompted stay.
