Antitrust target Ticketmaster spends big on lobbying amid woeful 2022

Ticketing debacles involving Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny have led to calls for parent company Live Nation's stranglehold on live entertainment to be broken

Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation had a calamitous 2022 - managing to anger everyone from Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny to Joe Biden and Mexico's president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. As calls grow for action to rein in the concert monopoly in the US and abroad, the company seems to have hit on a new strategy: spending big in Washington.

Live Nation's spending on lobbying jumped from about $250,000 in 2018 to nearly $1.3m in 2021, federal records show, and it may top that peak in 2022 and beyond. It has focused its lobbying campaign on the department of justice, as well as legislation aimed at greater transparency around ticket sales.