Ticketmaster, the ticketing company accused of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry, recently inserted language into its user agreements that steers customer lawsuits into a corporate-friendly private justice system, just months after a federal judge ruled the corporation’s use of such arbitration processes violated federal law.
Owned by the parent company Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster quietly announced the new agreement in an innocuous email sent last month titled “We’re updating our terms and policies,” which included a new binding arbitration clause and class action waiver buried in the fine print. Experts told the Lever that the new terms of use appear to be stretching the limits of an October 2024 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that struck down the company’s prior arbitration clause as unenforceable in a class action antitrust lawsuit.
“They are certainly treading very close to the line beyond which they’d be in violation of the law,” said Lee Hepner, legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project.
According to William Fletcher, the judge who delivered the court’s opinion in that case, the contract was invalid in part because consumers could not voluntarily accept the terms of the agreement, given that Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation hold such market power over ticketing with little competition.
Fletcher noted that after being forced to accept the terms, customers’ lawsuits were funneled into a mass arbitration system run by a shell company with financial ties to Ticketmaster that manipulated court practices to benefit the company. The ruling decided a class action antitrust lawsuit accusing Live Nation and Ticketmaster of anticompetitive conduct,…
Auteur: Luke Goldstein
