A government committee has called on the competition regulator to investigate Live Nation after encountering a “climate of fear” in the live music industry.
The Business and Trade Select Committee of the UK House of Commons published a report on Sunday (May 24) that concluded that the entertainment company had met the threshold for market dominance in multiple aspects of the UK live music supply chain.
It called on the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to launch an investigation into Live Nation, claiming that there are concerns against all three of the CMA’s standard indicators of market dominance, namely whether a company has substantial market share, whether competitors can realistically challenge it and whether consumers or suppliers are effectively locked into its ecosystem.
The committee called for evidence in October last year and found that many respondents had requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, which the committee said “in itself raises concerns about Live Nation’s dominant and controlling market position”.
Andrew Parsons, managing director and regional vice president of Ticketmaster UK, which is owned by Live Nation, appeared at one of the committee’s sessions and said it did not “recognise” the accusations that the company held a dominant position.
“It is an incredibly competitive market within the UK,” he said.
The new report argues that Live Nation has influence over most layers of the live music economy, from promotion and venues to secondary ticketing and festivals, reinforcing its dominance in ways rivals struggle to match.
Live Nation executive president Phil Bowdery told the committee that they are “vertically integrated, as are most of our competitors”, adding: “We are very good at what we do. Therefore, there is interest from the major artists to be with Live Nation.”
The committee’s chair Liam Byrne MP has said: “The evidence we received during this inquiry points to deep concerns about whether competition in the industry is now working fairly for fans, artists, venues and independent promoters.”
“What particularly alarmed the Committee was not just the scale of Live Nation‘s market position across promotion, venues and ticketing, but the climate of fear we encountered during this inquiry.”
“A striking number of submissions requested anonymity because people were worried about the consequences of speaking openly. That alone raises profound questions about the health of competition in the market.
“The CMA should now launch a full market investigation, before the end of this year, so there can be proper scrutiny of whether consumers, artists and independent businesses are getting a fair deal.”
Meanwhile in the US, a federal jury found in April that Live Nation and Ticketmaster had illegally monopolised major parts of the US live entertainment industry, ruling in favour of more than 30 states in a landmark antitrust case brought after the Department of Justice had separately reached a partial settlement with the company the previous month.
In October, the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) called for Live Nation to be broken up for exceeding market dominance of gigs in the UK. They cited numbers that the new government report supports, that Live Nation controls 66 per cent of tickets sold in 2025, when its affiliate companies are considered.
Creative Industries Minister Ian Murray wrote to NME earlier this year about the need for Live Nation to “step up to help the next generation of talent” by paying into the arena and stadium ticket levy, or else the government would be forced to intervene and make it mandatory by law.
In March, the Featured Artist Coalition (FAC) launched the new UKAT fund, offering proceeds collected from LIVE Trust donations as part of voluntary “levy” ticket contributions from a range of big names, including Radiohead, Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran.
Last month, calls emerged for a new ‘Music Fan Association’, which would give music fans more representation in policy and decision making, in response to research triggered by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s independent review last June.
