Ticketmaster Dominates the U.S. Ticketing Landscape

Through Ticketmaster, Live Nation’s ticketing division, the company controls a significant share of the ticket sales market. Ticketmaster generates income from service fees charged on ticket sales, which includes convenience fees, order processing fees and delivery charges.

Despite the fact that Ticketmaster is often criticized – whether fairly or not – for excessive fees and surcharges, there’s no way around the market leader in ticketing. According to Statista Consumer Insights, 63 percent of Americans who bought event tickets online in the past 12 months did so using Ticketmaster, which is miles ahead of second-placed Eventbrite at 31 percent and reselling platform StubHub at 28 percent.

While the DOJ’s lawsuit against Live Nation and its wholly-owned subsidiary Ticketmaster blames the market leader for excessive fees and high prices, the company vehemently denies those allegations: "The complaint - and even more so the press conference announcing it attempt to portray Live Nation and Ticketmaster as the cause of fan frustration with the live entertainment industry. It blames Live Nation and Ticketmaster for high service charges - and just the fact that there are fees - but ignores that Ticketmaster retains only a modest portion of those fees.”