Four Corners' Live Nation Report: Key Facts & Fallout

The much-anticipated Four Corners expose on Live Nation and the Australian live music industry aired tonight with confronting look under the hood of big business in the sector. While there weren’t a lot of bombshell surprises in the report for those inside the industry, the raw nature of competition between promoters and the cuthroat nature of the industry was laid bare for all to see.

Let’s break down the key points. 

Vertical Integration

The big fear in the Four Corners piece was the rise of ‘vertical integration’ where the one company owns many pieces in the live music business chain and can manipulate one company’s profits or losses to the benefit of another’s competitiveness while still making money for the parent. If every company setting fees, charges and profit margins in the chain are ultimately from the same parent company, the opportunity for a conglomerate to shift costs and income around their various businesses is real and is argued to be a potential unfair competitive impediment to competitors, a claim being made time and time again in the report against Live Nation. 

Although focusing on the activities of Live Nation, the report acknowledged that there are actually three major players in Australia including Live Nation, AEG / Mushroom and TEG.

The Four Corners report delves into Live Nation in the US where the Department of Justice has recently announced it would sue the company for monopolising markets across the live music industry. In the report, Australian artists lamented that when touring the US, there were certain markets where they simply could not avoid playing in Live Nation venues. 

Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett weighed in. “They in particular are egregious because they use, and I would say misuse, their market power, particularly in places like the United States. We’ve had to play at Live Nation venues in cities in America because there are no other venues because Live Nation has them all tied up. You're faced with quite a difficult choice, do you play to your fan base … or do you not go there at all?”

Live Nation have previously defended themselves against the allegations:

"Live Nation vigorously defends against the baseless DOJ allegations. Net profits show Live Nation and Ticketmaster do not wield monopoly power," it stated on its website. The company added that "the market structure in Australia differs significantly from that in the US".

Four Corners acknowledged that we are not at the same point as in the US, but asked Peter Garrett what could happen if we got there.

“It’ll mean increased ticket prices for starters. It’ll mean a lack of diversity in the way in which people are presented. But most importantly it will be a lack of competition.”

How Different Is Australia?

The Australian market is quite different to the US, but the Four Corners investigation showed the fear that many in the industry have if we continue down that path.

Here in Australia, according to the IBIS World survey, TEG-owned Ticketek showed revenue of $255.8 million against Ticketmaster’s $59.9 million and Eventbrite’s $12.4 million, making Ticketmaster a distant #2 in the local ticketing market, but it is their branching out into venues that seems to be raising eyebrows. 

Australia’s Big Three Live Music Operations

In a statement, Live Nation noted that there are approximately 2,700 live music venues in Australia with Live Nation operating just six of them. TEG (owner of Ticketek) and AEG / Mushroom both own large Sydney venues, but Live Nation is further down the path with six major venues across four states.

Australia is no stranger to vertical integration, with the much-loved Mushroom Group being at the forefront of it for decades. Arguably the backbone of the rise of Australian music in the 70s, vertical integration isn’t a by-product of its model, it’s been a design feature to cut red tape and reportedly to put Australian music first. That theory has been contested for decades, but the ‘vertical integration’ arguments are not new.

When Four Corners asked Michael Chugg whether he and partner, the late great Michael Gudinski were in a similarly powerful position before the entrance of Live Nation in 2010, Chugg said: 

"I suppose so. We didn't abuse it though.”

“Live Nation f***ed it up, basically, they pay too much for acts … it's all about their share price."

While it is doubtful that too many artists would agree that they should take a haircut, concerns around vertical integration has been a key piece of Australia’s music industry design from the start and the navigation of this with the entrance of international players has focused attention on the good, the bad and the ugly. 

If a company can outbid others for international artists because they can make losses on promoting tours while recouping via ticketing fees, merch, recorded music or agent fees, the bar of entry for competition can be significant. The same theory applies to all facets of the ‘vertically integrated’ industry. 

Arts Minister Tony Burke said that the consolidation of the industry was evident. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that we are heading down a pathway where these sorts of anti-competitive risks are going to exist in the music sector, so I put down a very clear warning to the companies on that. Yes, you can buy different parts of a supply chain, that’s all true. But you can’t then use that in an anticompetitive way and increasingly we are hearing those complaints from artists, from venues, from festivals.”

Ticketing Fees

The breakdown of fees and charges in the ticketing process was one of the reports’ centrepieces. According to Four Corners, tickets via Live Nation ticketing company Ticketmaster include ‘hidden’ service fees of $3.18, booking fee of $6.77 and an Infrastructure fee of $0.13.

There is then a transaction fee of “more than $7” (which is the one you see on your ticket) as well as potentially larger transaction fees for re-sold tickets and optional insurance. While Four Corners is correct that if you ticked every one of the boxes and were purchasing a re-sold ticket, it could end up being $30-40 in fees, the number on a generally purchased ticket without insurance, on those figures totals around $17. 

Whether it’s $17 or $40, the point is that these charges are reportedly taken off before the split with the artists, promoters and creatives which is the point of contention.

WA agent and promoter Paul Sloan said, "They're called transaction fees, booking fees, service fees, infrastructure fees. There’s like about 10 names that have come out of nowhere. I say all the time, what is the ‘inside charge’ for? And they say, you know, it's the ‘inside charge’.”

Ticket Prices

Four Corners also points to a massive jump in ticket prices more generally, with Australians paying an average of $65 twenty years ago to $105.48 in 2024 based on Pollstar figures. CPI over the same period rose 67.45%, making $65 in today’s dollars $108.84. It would seem that the music industry has actually done a good job of keeping prices in check, with everything else in consumer budgets actually rising at a greater pace over the period. 

The Music checked the figures with Live Performance Australia who provided figures specific to contemporary music with an average price of $77.09 in 2004 and $128.21 in 2023. While the figures are different, the rise is consistent, showing that things are largely in line with or below CPI increases.

Live Nation said in a statement: "Ticketmaster complies fully with Australian Consumer Law by incorporating per ticket or percentage fees into the price of the ticket paid by fans, and prominently disclosing any optional or transaction level fees. These fees support essential services, including tech development and innovation, customer service, security, and compliance, all of which require significant investment.”

Ticketmaster competitor Ticketek backed the sentiment, saying that the fees support “Ticketek's investment in services, innovation, and venue and technology infrastructure, to provide e-commerce and access control technology”.

Live Nation also suggested that artists and their teams are the ones deciding the ultimate ticket prices. Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett said that while it was largely true, the additional fees and charges were out of their control. 

“While the artist does set a range of ticket price to where it is, the artist doesn't set the booking fee [and] doesn't set any other hidden fees that exist within that ticket price, of which there are plenty of examples," Garrett told Four Corners.

Government Assistance

Four Corners used Freedom of Information to look into government funding awarded to Live Nation and found that there were tens of millions of dollars awarded to the company through grants and other government assistance, including during COVID.

Bluesfest’s Peter Noble has announced its final event and lamented the amount of money received by multinationals.

“We are in an extinction event right now. People are leaving this industry. Do we want to have our industry decimated? That is what we’re facing. Splendour In The Past as they’re now calling it is no longer with us, but you only needed to look at the shareholders reports. They were losing money and I guess that’s what happens when you’re dealing with shareholders. You get jettisoned.”

Noble said government funding was necessary for local events to save the industry.

“It costs us about $15-16 million to put the event on. If they gave us just 20% of that, it would give us the confidence that we won’t lost money in these times, or if we do that it won’t be so much that we can’t continue. We’re not asking for a handout, but when I see imported events put on by multinationals get grant money, I feel like the jilted wife.”

Both Four Corners and Noble acknowledge that Bluesfest has had government assistance in the past and Live Nation says that all grant conditions have been met for the funding they were awarded.

Dynamic Ticketing

Four Corners also looked at dynamic ticketing which has come under fire through the UK Oasis on-sale, leading to the practice being scrapped for the US and Australian dates. In Australia it was recently used for the Green Day tour, however did not seemingly receive the same level of backlash as overseas. Live Nation said in a statement: 

"Ticketmaster does not set prices, nor do we have or offer algorithmic surge pricing technologies. Ticketing companies do not control how artist teams and other event organisers price their shows or whether they adjust prices up or down based on demand. However, like other ticketing companies, we have tools to help artist teams understand demand for their tickets.”

In layman's terms, Live Nation are suggesting that their pricing mechanisms can be set based on demand if the artists’ teams want them to be, however it is not algorithmic in the same way that Uber’s surge pricing would work. 

Even if it was, Arts Minister Tony Burke said that the government would not be looking to regulate it at the moment.

"Surge pricing is something that, as consumers, people have always dealt with, I don't love it, but I think we have to be realistic, it's always been there.”

A Ticketing Levy?

An interesting idea floated in the report (and one that has been floated in industry circles across the last year) is the concept of a live music levy. The UK Music Venue Trust’s Mark Davyd said that it’s disgusting that large companies can make massive profits from stadium shows but not give back to the grassroots. 

"At 1,500 capacity, the ticket price and the number of people in the room will be sufficient to get you a profitable live show. It’s frankly disgraceful that the biggest companies in the music industry are prepared to see small venues — that get them that talent — closing down, they should be ashamed of that, they need to be called to account.”

In other areas like sport, it’s assumed in Australia that the large, profit-making entities will allocate a portion of their revenue to support the grassroots and the stars of tomorrow. Live Nation argue that self-regulation works and that it has promoted more than 900 shows in small venues since 2016.

"We are proud our Live Nation Australia team is operated by local Australians who live and work here to bring in some of the world's biggest acts to local fans while championing Australian talent and fuelling growth in the live music sector."

Davyd said Australia should consider the concept of a ticket levy where a dollar from every ticket sold to a large show would be reinvested into a struggling small venue. In the UK the idea got endorsement from parliament which asked large companies like Live Nation to be proactive in rolling out the idea, but as yet has not eventuated.

According to Davyd: "225 million pounds in gross income [from the Oasis tour], how much was invested into the grassroots? How much was put forward into developing the next Oasis, supporting our talent pipeline? A big fat zero. Nothing at all.”

What About Our Artists? 

It’s one thing to get under the corporate hood, but some of the hardest things to watch in the Four Corners investigation were the young Australian artists looking to make headway in the industry. These are people who want to be on stage performing, not doing MBAs and philosophy degrees to work out whether the industry they’ve dedicated their lives to is fair. 

Indigenous rapper Barkaa said that lack of regulation has made live music a “cowboy industry”. 

"I feel like I've met more trustworthy crackheads than people in this industry and that says a lot. Can we just enjoy and thrive and create rather than being in survival mode and always having our back up about people doing us dodgy or taking and ripping everything away from us? As artists, we need to take back that power, we need to be more vocal … write diss tracks to Live Nation, like, do something, guys!”

Guitarist Alex Cameron from Bad//Dreems lamented the lack of profits from their recent tour that they claim took a box office of around $100,000, with only around $9,000 making it back to the band’s pockets. 

"We were paying 10 per cent to our [Live Nation-owned] booking agent, there were ticketing fees, then the venue fees to Live Nation-owned venues, and then those Live Nation-owned venues were also taking a merch cut of the merch we sold," the guitarist said.

"We were paying four times to Live Nation, and we had no way of negotiating that, and in fact, when we raised it with our booking agent, they just (gave us) the shoulder shrug. A few thousand dollars of merch fees is a pittance to Live Nation. It's a huge amount of money for a band like us."

The band have since parted ways with their agent, but have confirmed that the tour was promoted by a non-Live Nation company, shining a light on the fact that the ‘vertical integration’ argument is indeed one that’s far more complicated than it often seems.

Where Does It Leave The Industry? 

Was the Four Corners piece an important report bringing to light industry practices? Does it leave us in a better place than we started? Was it competitors having a swipe at each other? Will it open the gates for other artists and industry to speak out? Will it open industry conversations that need to be had? It’s a solid ‘perhaps’ to all of those.

For the public in the middle of a cost of living crisis, they heard that concerts are too expensive. To Live Nation, it will all seem unfair to have been singled out in a market with three strong competitors, but it won’t stop people buying Oasis tickets or seemingly result in immediate government regulation that would curtail operations. For the industry power players, they’ll keep fighting to get the big names to fill stadiums, make profits and acquire more businesses in an arms race with no clear end in sight.

It’s broader than Live Nation, it’s about corporate responsibility. What do successful industry businesses, be they multinational or otherwise, owe Australian music? If you make profit from an industry, what is your responsibility to it and to its artists? 

Peter Garrett said: "Without nurturing your local artists, who are now getting washed away in a tidal wave of big companies, we're not hearing our songs, we're not hearing the things that connect us to the place that we're in.”

"What makes us human in a way is artists sharing their sense of things, their stories with the people who they've grown up with or who they live nearby, or who they're visiting, and that's why people still go out to shows. A country without its own music is a country without a soul.”