On Wednesday, Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and the rest of the congressional subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Technology, and Data Privacy will hold a hearing on the soaring cost of concert and event tickets, a problem millions of Americans know all too well.
This should come as no surprise. Congress has said that 2026 will be the year of prioritizing cost control for the American people. On this front, there are few clearer places to act.
For years, fans have been told that sky-high ticket prices are just the unavoidable result of inflation and “market forces.” That story doesn’t hold up.
What’s driving today’s ticket shock isn’t a free market at work. It’s a monopoly.
Congress knows it. That is why it is having an executive from that monopoly — Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster — testify at the hearing, which is aptly titled "Fees Rolled on All Summer Long: Examining the Live Entertainment Industry.”
Per ongoing Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission lawsuits, Live Nation’s sheer dominance allows it to gouge the industry at every step. It has control of over 80 percent of the primary ticketing market, owns many of the major concert venues, and controls a large chunk of the artist promotion marketplace.
Artists who want access to its major venues are pressured to use Live Nation promotion, and venues that want to book tours are pushed into exclusive Ticketmaster contracts. Consumers are thus left with a single ticketing option and a blizzard of opaque fees that they cannot avoid.
The DOJ’s case against Live Nation, co-signed by 40 states, is grounded in years of documented conduct that shows how the company has used its market power to foreclose competition and raise costs. This is precisely the type of conduct antitrust law was written to stop.
In a separate lawsuit, the FTC found similar, yet distinct, consumer harms.
The FTC’s lawsuit zeroes in on Live Nation’s deceptive and unfair practices — particularly how the company “turn[s] a blind eye as a matter of [company] policy” when brokers create multiple Live Nation/Ticketmaster accounts, in violation of federal law, to evade ticket-purchase limits. The result is that scalpers snap up tickets to the hottest shows long before ordinary fans ever get a fair shot. Those tickets are then resold at inflated prices, generating additional fees for Live Nation at every step while consumers are left holding the bag.
Together, these federal cases demonstrate how Live Nation’s market power translates directly into higher prices, fewer choices, and a rigged purchasing experience for millions of Americans.
Live Nation insists that the resale marketplace is responsible for the ticketing affordability problem, but these suits demonstrate that it’s the company that controls 80% of ticketing, which allows scalpers to buy up (and then mark up) its tickets, that’s the real issue. And so, while Live Nation continues its rent-seeking push for industry price controls, which would benefit no one but the monopoly itself, the real solution here is far more straightforward: we need to break up this behemoth.
By scheduling this forthcoming hearing, Congress is signaling that it knows that when a single firm controls both supply and distribution, affordability becomes impossible. Ticket prices rise because consumers end up having nowhere else to go — and the monopoly in the industry thus knows it can get away with raising its rates.
Importantly, this is not a partisan crusade. Conservatives have long opposed monopolies that crush small businesses and rig markets, while progressives have focused on consumer harm and corporate concentration. Republicans and Democrats alike have grilled Live Nation executives, questioned its merger conditions, and heard from constituents fed up with unfair fees and no real choice. In an era of polarized politics, enforcing antitrust law against a monopolistic middleman is rare common ground.
That reality fits squarely within the president’s affordability agenda. From groceries to housing to entertainment, Americans are paying more for everything, and monopolistic middlemen make that problem worse. You cannot meaningfully lower costs while allowing dominant firms to rig markets against consumers — because when monopolies control the rules, markets do not fix themselves. That’s what our legal and legislative systems are supposed to do.
It’s encouraging to see Congress, the DOJ, and the FTC all working together on this important issue. They are demonstrating what bipartisan, consumer first governance should look like, and for that, we should all be grateful.
Joel Thayer (@JoelThayer), a tech attorney, is president of the Digital Progress Institute