When it came to Ticketmaster, Pearl Jam was decades ahead of the Justice Department

By Lukas I. Alpert

The rock band went to war with the ticketing giant in the 1990s and lost - but its argument has been vindicated, in part, by the DOJ's antitrust action

Up until today, the most enduring fight with Ticketmaster started with a couple of charity concerts in Chicago in 1994.

That's when Pearl Jam began a years-long, bitter fight with the ticketing giant, after it had tacked service fees on tickets for shows that were trying to raise money for impoverished children.

The issues the Seattle grunge band raised more than 30 years ago lie at the heart of the Justice Department lawsuit filed Thursday arguing that Ticketmaster and its owner, Live Nation Entertainment Inc. (LYV), are a monopoly and need to be broken up.

Pearl Jam had made that very argument - that fans were being gouged and that artists had no say in the matter - for much of the 1990s, yet found themselves unable to tour without doing business with Ticketmaster.

"It is almost impossible for a band to do a tour of large arenas or other significant venues in major cities and not deal with Ticketmaster," Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard testified before Congress in 1994.

Messages left Thursday with representatives for the band weren't immediately returned.

That year, the band filed an antitrust complaint with the DOJ, urging it to take action. And for the next few years, the band attempted to tour for its album "Vs." - the follow-up to its 13x-platinum debut "Ten" - without using Ticketmaster's services.

That proved to be near impossible. Despite being one of the biggest rock bands in the country, they found themselves locked out of booking major venues in almost every city, as almost all of them had long-term, exclusive deals to work only with Ticketmaster.

Still, Pearl Jam stubbornly tried to book its own dates in venues far from sizable locales and ill-equipped to handle a major act. The tour was a failure, and the band was forced to cancel most of its shows.

Keeping up its fight, the Pearl Jam was effectively unable to tour in the U.S. in 1995 to support its next album, "Vitalogy." Tensions within the band, blamed in part to disagreements over the fight with Ticketmaster, led to the departure of drummer Dave Abbruzzese.

By 1998, the band - whose antitrust suit had fizzled - was forced to capitulate and begin doing business with Ticketmaster again, saying it no longer wanted to inconvenience its fans.

Complaints about Ticketmaster fees continued for years after Pearl Jam gave up its fight, and came to a head again in late 2022, when Ticketmaster's systems crashed when tickets for Taylor Swift's highly anticipated Eras Tour went on sale.

That fiasco led the Justice Department to take another look, paving the way for Thursday's antitrust suit.

"We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live-events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters and venue operators," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in comments that echoed what Pearl Jam argued three decades ago.

"The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster," Garland said.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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05-23-24 1427ET

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