Majority of Americans support breaking up Ticketmaster, Live Nation: Poll 

A majority of surveyed Americans said they support breaking up Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment, according to a poll released Tuesday.  

The poll, which was commissioned by Ticketmaster rival SeatGeek, found bipartisan support for breaking up the company, which merged in 2010.  

After receiving a short explanation of the 2010 merger and the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) reported antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster, 60 percent of respondents said they support the federal government seeking to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation, according to the poll exclusively shared with The Hill.  

The support was shared by 72 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of independents. And just 19 percent of overall respondents said they would oppose breaking up the company, according to the poll.  

The online survey was conducted by Global Strategy Group and Guidant Polling & Strategy. The poll conducted an online survey of 1,016 nationwide interviews from Aug. 31 to Sept. 8. 

Ticketmaster received renewed scrutiny last year after a high-profile and chaotic sale for tickets to Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. On the day of the pre-sale, the website crashed. Ticketmaster said in a blog post that the issue was due to the extraordinary high demand for tickets, as well as a “staggering number of bot attacks.” 

SeatGeek, which handled ticket sales for a couple of the shows, also experienced issues the day of the pre-sale, according to reports.  

After that chaotic sale, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing and grilled Joe Berchtold, Live Nation Entertainment’s president and chief financial officer, over the company’s market power after the merger.

At the hearing, Berchtold defended the company’s handling of the sale and bot traffic.  

“We knew bots would attack that onsale, and planned accordingly,” he said. “We were then hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we had ever experienced, and for the first time in 400 Verified Fan onsales they came after our Verified Fan access code servers.

“While the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets, the attack required us to slow down and even pause our sales,” Berchtold added.

The hearing also highlighted bipartisan support among lawmakers to rein in the power of the company.  

Shortly after the botched sale, The New York Times reported the DOJ opened an investigation into the company, but that the investigation pre-dated the sale of Swift’s tickets.  

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust will hold a hearing on oversight of the DOJ antitrust division featuring Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter.