Live Nation antitrust czar Dan Wall issued a response to news that the entertainment giant had been subpoenaed by a Senate subcommittee this week, saying that the company has complied substantially with requests for information from lawmakers. It has only held back information, he says, in matters that require a promise of confidentiality before it is shared – promises that have not been made.
“Live Nation has been cooperating with the Senate Subcommittee’s investigation for months and has in no way been “stonewalling,” he writes in a post on the company’s corporate website.
“Some of the information requested from Live Nation is highly sensitive client information about artists, venues, and others with whom we deal. It addresses plainly confidential subjects such as how much money artists make from their tours which in any other government investigation would be produced subject to binding confidentiality protections to prevent its misuse… The Subcommittee has refused to provide any confidentiality protections at all. That has led to an impasse that left us with no procedural option other than to decline to produce the third-party confidential information at issue.”
The back and forth came to light beginning late Monday, as news broke that the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had issued a subpoena demanding documents and answers to questions regarding the entertainment giant’s business practices and ticket pricing schemes.
Committee head Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said Monday that “Live Nation has egregiously stonewalled my Subcommittee’s inquiry into its abusive consumer practices,” making the step of subpoenaing the information necessary.
Wall, who went in-house at Live Nation in the last year as the company has faced increasing consumer anger and governmental inquiry regarding its allegedly anti-competitive and monopolistic business practices, is once again taking lead on the effort to dodge criticism or accountability for its role in what many consider a broken ticketing system with the enormous promotional, operations, and ticketing company at its core.
“It is only in a subpoena enforcement action that Live Nation can assert its rights to protect the confidentiality of this information,” writes Wall, who characterized the subpoena as “an unnecessary drain on taxpayer resources.”
“Our limit in this process—that the Subcommittee Chair has chosen to call stonewalling—is simply that we value our artist relationships and the interests of other stakeholders we work with too much to betray their trust by turning over their information without adequate protections.”
Sen. Blumenthal has not responded to this latest volley from the California corporation, but has been a significant critic and driver of legislative efforts to address the issues many believe Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s enormous scale and market power bring for consumers both in the United States and across the globe. He has co-authored legislation that would ban long-term and exclusive contracts between venues and ticketing companies – which are often cited as a key driver of Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s overwhelming market share. He and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island introduced a federal law banning so-called “junk fees”, and he also recently introduced the comprehensive BOSS and SWIFT Act ticket reform bill to the Senate.
“American consumers deserve fair ticket prices, without hidden fees or predatory charges,” Sen. Blumenthal wrote on Twitter Monday after the news of the subpoena broke. “And the American public deserves to know how Ticketmaster’s unfair practices may be enabled by its misuse of monopoly power.”