Ticketmaster Entertainment, LLC is an American ticket sales and distribution company based in Beverly Hills, California, with operations in many countries around the world.

The company has also faced scrutiny from the United States Department of Justice for retaliation against venues violating its 2010 10-year consent decree from the Live Nation merger, which has been extended an additional five years from 2020 through 2025.

Following the widespread criticism of the company's handling of the pre-sale of Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour in November 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) began a formal investigation into Live Nation Entertainment on the grounds of monopoly, antitrust law and consumer rights violations.

[4] Ticketmaster was founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 1976[5] by college staffers Peter Gadwa and Albert Leffler, Gordon Gunn III, as well as businessman Jerry Nelson.

[7] Under Rosen, the company moved into publishing and set up a travel agency and acquired rival Ticketron in 1991, making it the market leader.

Economists worried these laws would harm competition, but Moriarty expressed the need to reduce corrupt scalpers and counterfeit tickets.

[23] The deal was cleared by the U.S. Justice Department in January 2010 under the condition that the company sell Paciolan to Comcast Spectacor or another firm, and license its software to Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), its biggest competitor.

[24] The new company, which would be called Live Nation Entertainment, would also be subject to provisions for 10 years that prevented it from retaliating against venues that partnered with competing ticketing firms.

[24] When the DOJ planned to bring court proceedings against the company in 2020 for six violations to these provisions, Live Nation agreed to a settlement that extended them an additional fine years to 2025.

[26] One year after merging, Live Nation settled a previous class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster which alleged that the company had misled plaintiffs in its descriptions of delivery and processing fees.

[40][46] In 2013, the jam band The String Cheese Incident gave fans money to purchase 400 tickets to one of its shows in order to resell them on its own site with fewer fees.

[50] In May 1994, the grunge band Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice claiming Ticketmaster had cut the group out of venue bookings in a dispute over fees.

Irving Azoff, Ticketmaster CEO at the time, released an apology and stated that the TicketsNow link would no longer be shown for Springsteen's concerts.

[3] The lawsuit contends that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, abused its unrivaled power in the concert and ticketing industry to eliminate competition, lessening consumer choice and resulting in rising prices.

"[72] The company acknowledged it has "facilitated the quiet transfer of concert tickets directly into the hands of resellers through the years, though only at the request of the artists involved."

[80][81] A class action lawsuit was filed against Ticketmaster in 2003, alleging that it did not fully disclose UPS and order processing fees added to tickets sold online.

[85] In December 2020, Ticketmaster "entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors" and agreed to pay a $10 million fine after being charged with illegally accessing computer systems of a competitor.

[86] According to FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Williams Sweeney, "Ticketmaster used stolen information to gain an advantage over its competition, and then promoted the employees who broke the law.

[89][90] In March 2023, Robert Smith criticized the model and announced that the Cure would not be allowing Ticketmaster to sell dynamically-priced or platinum tickets for the band's upcoming North American tour.

[94] In less than an hour of availability, the ticketing platform's servers were "unable to answer", with users "either completely logged out or in a queue 2,000-plus people strong that appeared frozen."

Congressman Bill Pascrell, who had previously petitioned US Attorney General Merrick Garland in support of "strong antitrust enforcement by the Biden Administration" and criticized the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, stated that he attempted to purchase tickets but was placed on the waitlist.

[101] Swift released a statement on November 18, 2022, via her Instagram story; she asserted that she is protective of her fans and wanted to assure a quality experience for them, but found it difficult to "trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties".

[102] In December, a group of Swift's fans, called "Swifties," filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, accusing them of fraud, anti-trust violations, and price-fixing.

[105] Due to the criticism, Ticketmaster Mexico released a statement through their social networks apologizing and saying that "the inconveniences in the accesses were a consequence of the presentation of an unprecedented number of fake tickets, which caused an out of the ordinary agglomeration of people and an intermittent operation of our system".

Various media outlets reported that both the Democrat and Republican senators "grilled" Ticketmaster's representative, Joe Berchtold, the company's chief financial officer.

The witnesses prosecuting Ticketmaster included Jerry Mickelson, the president of JAM Creative Productions; and Jack Groetzinger, co-founder of SeatGeek.

[115][116] In March 2023, fans of Canadian rapper Drake also filed a class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster in the Superior Court of Quebec, alleging intentional deception and fraud.

[133] On 5 September 2024 the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced it was launching an investigation into Ticketmaster over Oasis concert ticket sales.

[136] Ticketmaster has partnerships with venues, professional sports leagues and teams, college and universities, musical acts and theatre tours[137][138][139] and target corporation in the United States and internationally.

[140] Ticketmaster has partnered with musical acts such as Taylor Swift,[141] and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra,[142] and theatre productions such as Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.