Dutch Lawmakers Want Ticketmasters Probed

Multiple economists and lawmakers 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.

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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.

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.”