TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Oct 31, 2024

Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary Ticketmaster failed to persuade a U.S. appeals court to block a proposed class action accusing them of charging artificially high ticket prices, Reuter reports. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week upheld a lower court’s ruling that Live Nation could not force ticket buyers to arbitrate their claims through a new arbitration body called New Era ADR. The court said the arbitration rules — which it called “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory to be borderline unintelligible” — were unfair to consumers and “overtly” beneficial to the company. Live Nation defended New Era, calling its rules "sensible, fair and similar" to those at other platforms. In a separate case, the U.S. Justice Department and a group of states, including Tennessee, asked a U.S. judge in May to break up Live Nation for allegedly violating antitrust law by controlling ticket sales and pricing.