In an unsettling end-of-week regulatory filing, Ticketmaster parent Live Nation Entertainment reported Friday that it had caught a hacker trying to sell user data via the dark web.
The episode dates to May 20, the company said in the SEC filing. The company said it had “identified unauthorized activity within a third-party cloud database environment containing company data,” primarily from Ticketmaster. A forensic investigation revealed that on May 27 (this past Monday), a “criminal threat actor” offered what it said was company user data for sale via the dark web.
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“We are working to mitigate risk to our users and the company, and have notified and are cooperating with law enforcement,” the company said. “As appropriate, we are also notifying regulatory authorities and users with respect to unauthorized access to personal information.”
The incident is awkwardly timed, as Live Nation has come under the microscope of federal antitrust regulators. Last week, the Department of Justice sued Live Nation, seeking to separate it from Ticketmaster due to what it describes as monopolistic behavior.
Performers and fans have grumbled about Ticketmaster for years, but the complaints spilled into the halls of Congress in 2022 after Taylor Swift and her fans became the epicenter of the fight over the cost and scarcity of tickets. Live Nation operates and books most of the leading concert venues, with ticket sales for those shows managed by Ticketmaster under the same corporate roof since the companies merged in 2010. The government alleges that setup is a form of self-dealing that harms consumers by enabling prices to go ever higher. The company has denied it inflates prices or abuses its market position. It derided the DOJ lawsuit as a “stunt.”
The hacking episode, Live Nation said in the filing, has not had a material impact on its overall business operations or financial condition or results. “We continue to evaluate the risks and our remediation efforts are ongoing,” the company added.
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