Ticketmaster’s nontransferrable ‘SafeTix’ are anti-competitive, DOJ suit claims
The proper intent of Ticketmaster’s push for nontransferable tickets used to be to label it more sturdy for fans to utilize rival platforms cherish StubHub and SeatGeek, the newly updated criticism within the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit in opposition to Ticketmaster and its dad or mum firm, Reside Nation, alleges. The criticism, which used to be amended on Monday after 10 states joined the DOJ’s lawsuit, cites internal Ticketmaster documents got all the way thru the simply job.
In 2019, Ticketmaster rolled out SafeTix, which replaced static barcodes on digital tickets with encrypted barcodes that refresh every 15 seconds. Ticketmaster marketed SafeTix as a strategy of reducing label fraud, but the criticism claims reducing competitors used to be “a valuable motivation” for the contemporary ticketing system.
A doc from a 2014 executive assembly calls the “non-transferrable digital label” a “sport-changer.” At a gathering three years later, the rotating barcode used to be described as a “product enhancement [ ] for market half” and an opportunity to “REDUCE TM’S ECONOMIC RISK,” based mostly totally on the criticism.
The amended criticism comprises contemporary info about Ticketmaster’s dominance of the events market. One internal Reside Nation doc cited within the criticism notes that Ticketmaster is the main ticketer for roughly 80 percent of arenas across the country that host NBA or NHL teams. As of 2022, Reside Nation-promoted events accounted for 70 percent of all amphitheater presentations across the country, based mostly totally on internal Reside Nation events mentioned within the criticism.
The DOJ alleges that which capacity of Ticketmaster’s behavior, shoppers comprise “paid more and continue to pay more for costs touching on to tickets to dwell events than they’d comprise paid in a free and commence competitive market.” The proper amount of monetary damage is level-headed unknown, the criticism claims, and would require discovery from Ticketmaster and Reside Nation’s books, as successfully as from its third-birthday party competitors.
