More calls to investigate Ticketmaster for unfair competition in the Netherlands
Parliamentary parties SP, GroenLinks, and PvdD and multiple economists want the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) to investigate Ticketmaster for unfair competition, AD reports. In response, the ACM said they were closely monitoring ticket sales in the Netherlands, but would not say if it an investigation was ongoing.
The call for an investigation stems from the controversy around the resale of Lowlands tickets. Lowlands will only allow the resale of tickets through Ticketmaster - excluding competitors like Ticketswap. Ticketmaster allows resellers to sell Lowlands tickets for a markup of no more than 20 percent. The platform also charges service costs twice, amounting to over 40 euros per Lowlands ticket. As a result, Lowlands tickets, which originally cost 300 euros each, sell on Ticketmaster for over 400 euros each. And they can be bought nowhere else. Lowlands sold out within 15 minutes of ticket sales opening on February 4th.
The matter is even more sensitive because both Ticketmaster and Lowlands’ organizer, MOJO, fall under the same American company - Live Nation. According to AD, the United States authorities are already investigating Live nation for disrupting the free market.
Economists want the ACM to do the same. “It seems that Ticketmaster is abusing a monopoly position in the ticket sales market by excluding competitors like Ticketswap and charging extortionate prices,” Timo Klein, an expert in competition economics affiliated with Utrecht University, said to the newspaper. “By closing the second-hand market to competitors, Ticketmaster is free to ask what they want. I am increasingly convinced that Ticketswap can make this a hard case at the ACM.”
Maarten Pieter Schinkel, professor of economics at the University of Amsterdam, called the commotion about this in parliament “dramatically exaggerated.” He pointed out that Ticketmaster capped the resell of Lowlands tickets to 20 percent profit for the seller. Without the cap, those prices would run much higher because many people are desperate to attend Lowlands. “You don’t want a free market for resale: the price is only driven up there,” he said. “So this involves a few dozen euros. That is manageable, and with Ticketmaster, you have a guarantee that you will enter.”
He added that Ticketmaster and Lowlands sidelining competitors like Ticketswap is “a form of exclusion that is in principle prohibited under competition law.” Consumers can become the victim if Ticketmaster decides to increase service costs, for example.
Professor Marjan Offlers is also critical of that strategy. “A competitor is simply being pushed out of the market here,” she told the newspaper.
A spokesperson for the ACM would not tell AD whether or not it launched an investigation into Ticketmaster. “We know this is going on. We are not deaf or blind. But we never announce an investigation in advance. We want to prevent companies from destroying evidence.” The spokesperson added that having a dominant position is not prohibited in the Netherlands. “But appropriating monopoly power through distortion of competition is.”
