The Department of Justice has amended its antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation, alleging that Ticketmaster's introduction of nontransferable tickets and the SafeTix system was primarily intended to stifle competition from rival platforms like StubHub and SeatGeek, rather than merely to reduce ticket fraud. "The complaint, which was amended on Monday after 10 states joined the DOJ's lawsuit, cites internal Ticketmaster documents obtained during the legal process," notes The Verge. From the report:
In 2019, Ticketmaster rolled out SafeTix, which replaced static barcodes on electronic tickets with encrypted barcodes that refresh every 15 seconds. Ticketmaster marketed SafeTix as a way of reducing ticket fraud, but the complaint claims reducing competition was âoea primary motivationâ for the new ticketing system. [...] The amended complaint includes new information about Ticketmaster's dominance of the events market. One internal Live Nation document cited in the complaint notes that Ticketmaster is the primary ticketer for approximately 80 percent of arenas across the country that host NBA or NHL teams. As of 2022, Live Nation-promoted events accounted for 70 percent of all amphitheater shows across the country, according to internal Live Nation events mentioned in the complaint.
The DOJ alleges that because of Ticketmaster's conduct, consumers have âoepaid more and continue to pay more for fees relating to tickets to live events than they would have paid in a free and open competitive market.â The exact amount of monetary harm is still unknown, the complaint claims, and will require discovery from Ticketmaster and Live Nation's books, as well as from its third-party competitors.
I actually feel like the safetix thing was a good way to combat scalping. Sucks that the tickets are still expensive and a lot of the money goes to TicketMaster, but it's not the technology causing the high prices. Venues need to step up and tell TicketMaster to suck it when TicketMaster wants them to be the exclusive ticket distributor.
Unfortunately it wasn't a very good attempt at it. It's been completely reverse engineered already and the "secret" to generate the changing barcodes is sent to the buyer with every purchase. So anyone can generate the dynamic barcodes at will. 404 Media did a good write up on it recently.
https://www.404media.co/scalpers-are-working-with-hackers-to-liberate-non-transferable-tickets-from-ticketmasters-ecosystem/
Wow, TIL. That's hilariously inept. I should not have expected any better from TicketMaster I guess.
That was pretty much my reaction while reading it too, haha.