KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

The proposed merger between Albertsons and Kroger and Ticketmaster has been the point of a recent hearing before Congress, putting a shine on antitrust laws and their impact on local communities.

The proposed $24.6 billion merger between the grocery chains was first announced in October 2022. Kroger representatives stated in a press release that its acquisition of Albertsons will expand its customer reach and “improve proximity to deliver fresh and affordable food to approximately 85 million households with a premier omnichannel experience.”

The statement went on to say the merger would create a leading continuous ecosystem across the country to provide customers with the best class shopping experience across both stores and digital channels. Under the agreement, the grocery stores would have than 710,000 associates under employment and operate a total of 4,996 stores, 66 distribution centers, 52 manufacturing plants, 3,972 pharmacies and 2,015 fuel centers. In Tennessee, there are 121 Kroger stores with more than 18,000 workers, including the Kroger located at 1905 N. Jackson St., Suite 500 in Tullahoma.

Yet, since the announcement the merger has been met with pushback, including from members of Congress. During a November hearing with the Senate Judicial Committee about the proposed merger, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., questioned Kroger’s plan to reinvest half a billion dollars of cost savings from synergies to lower prices for customers.

During her trip to Coffee County this past week, Blackburn told The News that her concerns related to the vagueness of the company’s statements and the potential impact of small grocery stores in rural areas in Tennessee.

“We were not sure on how to interpret some of their statements and our concern is having availability of food for people to purchase, having that available at a good price that is affordable and then making certain that you don’t see so much consolidation that you have fewer grocery stores you know that they were going to be closing doors,” she said. “That creates food deserts.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will need to approve the final deal, which is expected to be decided sometime in 2024.

Keeping a similar tone of competitiveness in the marketplace, Blackburn and the rest of the Judicial Committee questioned executives from Live Nation and Ticketmaster in January regarding its handling of the presale of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour back in November, where long wait times, extortionate fees and website outages left many fans angry and ticketless. Ticketmaster has long been criticized for being a monopoly in the live entertainment market, especially after its merger with Live Nation in 2010, with years of complaints about high fees, questionable resale practices and so on.

“The fact that Ticketmaster is one of the most active apps, it has one of the highest number of monthly users of any app, they store, retain, monetize and share an incredible amount of consumer data,” Blackburn said. “We were concerned about that and wanted to get more information on that and look at what it has done to the competitiveness of the marketplace so it was a two-tiered questioning we did.”

Live Nation also owns the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival after buying a controlling ownership stake in 2015 before completely buying out the music festival from Superfly Entertainment in 2020.

During the three-hour hearing, Live Nation President and CEO Joe Berchtold told lawmakers that bots played a large part the Swift presale debacle. Blackburn questioned how Ticketmaster could have an issue with bots and was told by representatives of Ticketmaster that they catch about 90% of the bots.

“I told him in the hearing that’s a failing grade,” Blackburn said. “You look at the bank, you look at the hospital, you look at the credit card processor and all of these people have figured it out, but for some reason Ticketmaster has not figured this out.”

She added in 2016, she and Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., passed the Better Online Tickets Sales (BOTS) Act which gives the FTC the authority to enforce and stop attempts by individuals and organizations of purchasing tickets en masse via ticket bots. According to Blackburn, the bill has only been implemented once.

“Ticketmaster, in all of five years, have called the FTC one time and said ‘We think we have a bot.’ One time,” Blackburn said.

She added that going forward the Judicial Committee is working with the FTC to help implement and stop bots, and work with other companies to increase their security protocols.