An antitrust lawsuit targeting “predatory acts” by Live Nation and Ticketmaster has been thrown out, Billboard reports, after a federal appeals court ruled that the suit didn’t have legal standing because ticket buyers had waived their right to sue in the Terms of Use.
The proposed class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of purchasers, whose ticket-buying experience had allegedly been ruined by Live Nation, a “monster” that “must be stopped.” In an April 2020 complaint, the suit alleged that Live Nation’s “anticompetitive scheme has been wildly successful and today threatens to put nearly all ticketing services for major concert venues (primary and secondary) in the United States under Ticketmaster’s monopolistic thumb.”
The suit had previously been dropped by a lower court on the grounds that Live Nation customers had agreed to settle any such disputes in arbitration, which is generally friendlier to corporations than court. The plaintiffs appealed, arguing that consumers were being misled because the arbitration agreement had not been presented in a clear way.
The appeal was heard by the US Ninth Circuit. “At three independent stages — when creating an account, signing into an account, and completing a purchase — Ticketmaster and Live Nation webpage users are presented with a confirmation button above which text informs the user that, by clicking on this button, ‘you agree to our Terms of Use,’” Judge Danny J. Boggs wrote on behalf of three-judge panel. “A reasonable user would have seen the notice and been able to locate the terms via hyperlink.”
In the 24-page ruling, Judge Boggs added, “Appellees’ notice is conspicuously displayed directly above or below the action button at each of three independent stages that a user must complete before purchasing tickets. Crucially, the ‘Terms of Use’ hyperlink is conspicuously distinguished from the surrounding text in bright blue font, making its presence readily apparent.”
Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, and in recent months there’s been a renewed focus on whether the ticketing giant’s huge market share constitutes a monopoly. In January, the Senate held a hearing about Ticketmaster’s botched handling of Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour.” That same fiasco is also the subject of a lawsuit being brought by a group Swift fans, though it will likely face the same stumbling block as the one heard by the Ninth Circuit, since those fans also agreed to arbitration in the Terms of Use. Besides that, both the Justice Department and Tennessee’s Attorney General are investigating the company for antitrust violations.
