Antitrust lawyer: Ticketmaster and Live Nation should be broken up

Former DOJ antitrust lawyer David Balto discusses the Live Nation Senate hearing spurred by the Taylor Swift ticket debacle. Balto previously testified against the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

You can see the entire interview here.

Key Video Takeaways

00:00 On "direct consumer harm" of monopoly

00:42 On the case for separating Live Nation and Ticketmaster

Video transcript

- Ticketmaster and Live Nation facing a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. You testified against the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation. What do you think came out of that hearing today, and might they be broken up. Should they.

DAVID BALTO: Well, well here's the critical question. How are consumers affected? And if you bought a ticket any time recently, you know by paying those super competitive charges for access to tickets that there's a monopolist there. That monopolist is exercising their monopoly power. Quite unlike the situation with Google. There's direct consumer harm.

Moreover, there's a very good case for separating the two companies. They're not integrated. There's not efficiencies that come about because the two firms are together. Rather by bringing the two firms together, they've created a monopoly broth of exclusionary conduct. And the only way to of separate that broth is to break up the two companies.