The head of Live Nation Entertainment faced sharp criticism Tuesday on Capitol Hill from lawmakers, competitors, public policy experts and a member a popular soul-pop band.

The hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee was held in the wake of November’s Taylor Swift ticket debacle that frustrated millions of the pop superstar’s fans and renewed allegations that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, has monopolized the ticketing industry.

Senators and others who testified accused Live Nation and Ticketmaster of dominating the market by operating many of the performance venues and holding exclusive multiyear ticketing contracts with those they do no control. Some accused Live Nation of retaliating against venues that use ticketing companies other than Ticketmaster by steering shows it promotes elsewhere. Others claimed that even if explicit threats are not made, arenas feel pressured to partner with Ticketmaster because they’re afraid of losing out on top acts promoted by Live Nation and the revenue that comes with them. 

The company also pads its profits by collecting additional fees on ticket transfers in its resale marketplace, critics noted.

“I believe in capitalism, and to have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. “You can't have too much consolidation, something that unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know all too well.”

At the heart of the criticism was the 2010 merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, in which the Obama Justice Department required a consent decree that prohibited the new entity from retaliating against concert venues. In 2019, during the Trump administration, the DOJ amended and extended the consent decree after the department found that Live Nation repeatedly violated the agreement.

Since the Swift fiasco, the Justice Department has reportedly opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation.

“Here we are, almost 13 years later, faced with a flotilla of allegations and complaints that the merged entity has done exactly what it said would never happen,” said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

Attorneys general in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Tennessee have launched inquiries into the Swift ticketing breakdown. And some Swift fans have filed a lawsuit accusing Ticketmaster and Live Nation of antitrust violations, fraud, misrepresentation, breach of contract and other offenses

Live Nation President Joe Berchtold on Tuesday defended the company against antitrust allegations. He insisted its market share has shrunk since the merger due to increased competition — from around 80% in 2008 to less than 60% today. He said the venues, not the ticketing service, sets service fees — also a target of critics at the hearing — and that Live Nation operates only 5% to 6% of the venues. And he maintained that the company does not retaliate against arenas that work with alternative ticketing companies.

According to a 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office, Ticketmaster controlled over 80% of primary ticketing across the United States for concerts, sports games and other major events. The company also held the second-largest market share in secondary ticket sales, behind StubHub.

Contradicting Berchtold’s testimony, Clyde Lawrence of the band Lawrence, who has written an op-ed and lyrics critical of Live Nation, told lawmakers that the venues have claimed to him that they don’t set the ticket fees. 

“I don't know who is doing the fees, but we ask that question to the venues and they say, not only do we not choose what it is, we don't even know what it is … ,” he said. “So I don’t know where the answer lies.”

Klobuchar said the finger-pointing surrounding the fees is evidence of a lack of transparency.

Lawrence said tickets through Ticketmaster to his band’s shows generally include fees of 40% to 50% added to the base price. He said one show last spring had a whopping 82% fee.

Berchtold acknowledged there are problems in the ticket industry, including the proliferation of bots snatching up tickets to be resold at a higher price. He called for greater enforcement on bots as well as laws requiring “all-in pricing” — clearly stating the total price of a ticket, including fees — and stopping resale websites from advertising tickets that have not yet gone on sale to the public.

The Live Nation president’s explanations did not seem to satisfy many of the senators.

“Mr. Berchtold, I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause. And may I suggest, respectfully, that unfortunately your approach today in this hearing is going to solidify that cooperation because, as I hear and read what you have to say, it's basically, it's not us, it's everyone but us.

“May I suggest respectfully that Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say: ‘I'm the problem. It's me,’” said Blumenthal, one of several times Swift lyrics were quoted during the hearing.

Pressed by Blumenthal, Berchtold said he supports “as a general concept” legislation that would require greater transparency and crack down on bots.

Jerry Mickelson, co-founder of Jam Productions, a concert promotion company, said he’s seen business plummet since the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, blaming it on Live Nation’s exclusive agreements with venues. He said in 1996 his firm produced 100 concerts in arenas. A year after the merger, it had decreased to 46. Last year, it produced just 14 arena shows.

“Now Live Nation is going after music theaters and clubs of all sizes in an effort to control the entire live music industry from the top to the bottom,” Mickelson said.

Jack Groetzinger, co-founder and CEO of SeatGeek, called for the government to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

“As long as Live Nation remains both the dominant concert promoter and ticketer of major venues in the U.S., the industry will continue to lag competition and struggle,” he testified.

November’s sale to Swift’s U.S. “Eras” tour presented a series of challenges when Ticketmaster could not handle the influx of presale customers, forcing would-be-concertgoers to wait in hourslong digital lines, sometimes to no avail. The company later canceled its general public sale, citing "extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.” 

In a statement posted on Instagram last month, Swift expressed her frustration with Ticketmaster.

“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I'm trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” she wrote. “I'm not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”

Asked about the hearing Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden is a proponent of increasing competition in the economy.

"Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism; it's exploitation," she said. "And that's why [the president has] really made an effort with his executive actions."

Spectrum News' Rachel Tillman and Austin Landis contributed to this report.