DOJ suit: Ticketmaster’s nontransferrable SafeTix are anti-competitive

The real intent of Ticketmaster’s push for non-transferrable tickets was to make it harder for fans to use rival platforms like StubHub and SeatGeek, the newly updated complaint in the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation alleges. The complaint, which was amended Monday after 10 states joined the DOJ’s lawsuit, cites internal Ticketmaster documents obtained during the legal process.

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 “a primary motivation” for the new ticketing system. 

A document from a 2014 executive meeting calls the “non-transferrable digital ticket” a “game-changer.” At a meeting three years later, the rotating barcode was described as a “product enhancement [ ] for market share” and an opportunity to “REDUCE TM’S ECONOMIC RISK,” according to the complaint.

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 ticketed 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 “paid 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.” 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.