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The U.S. Department of Justice sued Live Nation Thursday over the 2010 agreement clearing the concert promotion giant's purchase of Ticketmaster, an oft-maligned deal that enforcers now want to unwind and that is blamed for fiascoes like the meltdown of ticket sales for Taylor Swift's Eras tour.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have faced accusations ever since the platforms merged, including claims that they charged exorbitant prices for concert tickets and retaliated against concert venues that used other ticketing companies.

The DOJ Antitrust Division has moved against the deal's fallout once before, forcing Live Nation in early 2020 to extend and tweak the original merger clearance settlement, over allegations it retaliated against concert venues trying to use ticketing companies other than Ticketmaster. Those Trump-era changes were not enough for Biden-era enforcers, who've been pushed to sue by lawmakers and advocacy groups.

DOJ Sues Live Nation

Calling Live Nation the "monopolist" that "serves as the gatekeeper for the delivery of nearly all live music in America today," the complaint filed in New York federal court and joined by the attorneys general of more than two dozen states and the District of Columbia argued Live Nation and Ticketmaster have used their tremendous power over concert venues and performers "to insert themselves at the center and the edges of virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem."

"This has given Live Nation and Ticketmaster the opportunity to freeze innovation and bend the industry to their own benefit. While this may be a boon to Live Nation's bottom line, there is a real cost to Americans. As described in detail below, today Live Nation possesses and routinely exercises control over which artists perform on what dates at which venues," the DOJ said.

"Through Ticketmaster, Live Nation also possesses and exercises control over how fans are able to purchase tickets to see their favorite artists in concert and what fees those fans will pay to do so," the DOJ said in the complaint, which explicitly calls for Ticketmaster to be sold off.

DOJ leadership said Thursday that the complaint goes well beyond the 2010 deal clearing the Ticketmaster purchase. While that case was limited to concerns with a single merger under Section 7 of the Clayton Act, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the DOJ's top antitrust official, told reporters that the new complaint targets "a systemic and systematic pattern of anticompetitive conduct that addresses nearly every aspect of the live music supply chain," and it does so under the Sherman Act.