By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) – A U.S. Senate Commerce Committee panel will hold a hearing next week on efforts to crack down on unfair ticketing issues that will include an executive from Ticketmaster-parent company Live Nation and singer Kid Rock, a Senate aide told Reuters.
The Justice Department and dozens of state attorneys general sued Live Nation Entertainment and its Ticketmaster unit in 2024 for allegedly monopolizing markets across the live concert industry in ways that hurt artists and fans.
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn will chair the January 28 hearing before the Consumer Protection, Technology, and Data Privacy subcommittee that will also focus on the FTC suit against Ticketmaster, all-in pricing, and other consumer protection issues.
The FTC in August sued ticket reseller Key Investment Group for evading purchasing limits to buy up thousands of tickets to live events including Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and resell them at a markup using thousands of Ticketmaster accounts.
Blackburn and Senator Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat, filed a legal brief supporting the FTC suit against Key Investment, saying “bad actors buy up tickets with no intention of using them. They then resell the tickets on secondary markets with eye-popping markups. Their unearned profits come out of the pockets of ordinary Americans who just want to attend a performance by a favorite artist or cheer on their team at the big game.”
Key Investment has denied wrongdoing, saying its ticket purchases did not use automated software, or bots.
President Donald Trump in March signed an executive order aimed at protecting fans from “exploitative ticket scalping” and reforming the U.S. live entertainment ticketing industry.
Kid Rock, who attended the signing, last year decried ticket scalpers’ use of bots to buy large numbers of tickets at face value and then resell them for a big markup.
Live Nation Entertainment, which did not immediately comment Wednesday, said last year it supported Trump’s order and thanked him for trying to address scalpers and bots.
In January 2025, U.S. senators assailed Live Nation Entertainment’s lack of transparency and inability to block bot purchases of tickets. That hearing was called after a major fiasco involving ticket sales for a Taylor Swift concert tour.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio)
Comments