WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice

Department and a group of 30 states and the District of Columbia

Thursday sued to break up Live Nation, arguing the big

concert promoter and its Ticketmaster unit illegally inflated

concert ticket prices and hurt artists.

"It is time to break up Live Nation," said U.S. Attorney

General Merrick Garland.

Concert fans and politicians for years have been calling for

a re-examination of Live Nation's purchase of Ticketmaster in

2010, especially after the ticket seller in 2022 botched sales

to Taylor Swift's first concert tour in years, sending fans into

hours-long online queues, charging prices that customers said

were too high and drawing charges of poor service.

Thursday's legal action underscores the aggressive approach

President Joe Biden's antitrust enforcers have adopted as they

seek to create more competition in a wide range of industries,

from Big Tech to healthcare to groceries.

"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," Garland said, adding that as a

result fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities

to perform and smaller promoters get squeezed out.

The suit says Live Nation directly manages more than 400

musical artists and controls around 60% of concert promotions at

major concert venues. It owns or controls more than 265 concert

venues in North America, and through Ticketmaster controls

roughly 80% or more of big venues' primary ticketing for

concerts.

In the lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York,

the DOJ argued the "vast scope" of Live Nation and Ticketmaster

allowed them to "insert themselves at the center and the edges

of virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem."

U.S. senators in January 2023, in a hearing called after the

ticket sales fiasco, slammed Live Nation's lack of transparency

and inability to block bot purchases of tickets.

In 2010, the Justice Department approved Ticketmaster's

controversial merger with Live Nation, with conditions intended

to stop the combined company from harming competition.

In 2020, a court extended most of the DOJ's oversight of the

merger to 2025 because, the department said, Ticketmaster

retaliated against stadiums and arenas that opted to use other

ticketing companies.

Live Nation has said in the past that it was confident its

business practices were legal, and that the probe had been

prompted by complaints from rivals, including re-sellers.