A federal jury in New York found Wednesday that Live Nation, the corporate parent of Ticketmaster, maintained an illegal monopoly over entertainment venue ticket sales. The verdict is a major victory for concertgoers, artists, independent venues and the coalition of over 30 states that pursued the case against the entertainment giant, not to mention the overall cause of making American life more affordable. And, just as significantly, it’s a huge faceplant for the Trump administration, which, only days into this same trial, reached a surprise settlement with the entertainment behemoth.
After the Trump administration announced the settlement, some pundits quickly predicted the case would likely end with a whimper. The states, they said, would face an uphill battle in suddenly taking over the lead role from the federal government and effectively prosecuting the entertainment behemoth on such short notice.
What these naysayers failed to consider was the egregious facts of the case — and how tired Americans are of being beaten up by big business.
Live Nation executives actually boasted in writing about ripping off customers.
Entertainment colossus Live Nation is the product of a series of acquisitions going back to the 1990s. As a condition for federal approval of its 2010 corporate marriage with Ticketmaster, Live Nation agreed not to engage in several anticompetitive practices, such as refusing to book artists it managed at venues that did not use Ticketmaster’s ticketing services.
Live Nation didn’t just fail to live up to its promise. It repeatedly, blatantly violated the agreement. The states argued employees of the newly combined company, which controls an astonishing 86% of the concert ticket market and almost three-quarters of the overall event ticketing market, began threatening venues with retaliation unless they used Ticketmaster. Live Nation executives actually boasted in writing about ripping off customers. One employee, who is now a ticketing executive, joked that an increase in parking fees for customers was “robbing them blind baby. That’s how we do.”
But parking is just one of the fees the company forced customers to pay. There are processing fees, service fees, venue fees and convenience fees — so many junk fees that they can increase the cost of a ticket by more than half its initial price. In Europe, where multiple competitors can sell tickets for the same event at the same venue, these additional surcharges are — surprise! — significantly lower than what we pay in the United States.
Live Nation was desperate to settle the case, and it attempted to do so by hiring Trump administration-favored lobbyists and other connected insiders. Sure enough, the announced deal was a slap on the wrist. The company agreed to pay a relatively minor fine of about $280 million, divest itself of several concert venues, put a ceiling of 15% on service fees and end exclusive Ticketmaster deals with entertainment facilities.
In other words, Live Nation once again promised to be really, really good going forward and not to threaten artists and facilities that didn’t want to do business with the company. It was such a lackluster deal for the government that, for several days, the Justice Department didn’t even tell its own prosecutors presenting the case in federal court about the settlement, not to mention the judge.
The judge in this case can and should scrutinize the settlement closely.
What happens now? The states, in line with the DOJ’s position when it filed the case, will almost certainly seek to reverse the more than 15-year-old merger and break up the company. Live Nation is, as my colleague at the American Economic Liberties Project, Matt Stoller, pointed out, a “uniquely” easy company to break up into its component parts. And it’s not as if the current company can be trusted to follow the rules going forward. Live Nation did not maintain its monopoly by providing excellent service at a reasonable price, but rather by throwing its weight around to get its way.
There’s another matter, too: the Trump administration doing the bidding of big business. Its settlement with Live Nation is in the same spirit as the sign-offs on mergers such as Paramount and Warner Brothers, or HP and Juniper. The judge in this case can and should scrutinize the settlement closely. Congress has the power to look into both the settlement and the mergers, and lawmakers should use that authority. At the same time, this verdict should hearten the state attorneys general who have already joined together to fight these wildly inappropriate and anticompetitive mergers.
But let’s take a moment to celebrate Americans, who are responsible for successfully holding Live Nation to account. Before the Biden administration brought this case in 2024, outraged Taylor Swift fans brought mass public attention to Ticketmaster’s monopolistic failings and helped galvanize politicians across the political spectrum to call out the company. And they followed other music and sports fans and professionals. For years, Americans shared their stories on social media, talked to journalists, signed on to groups like Break Up Ticketmaster (launched by my employer, the American Economic Liberties Project) and helped keep attention focused on it.
And, then there were the nine jury members that handed Trump and corporate America this defeat. They didn’t just deliver a verdict on Ticketmaster. They also said enough to an economy in which giant monopolies have grown and prospered at the expense of honest businesses and powerless consumers. Now it’s time for an encore performance — against all the other monopolistic deals getting waived through by this administration.
Helaine Olen
Helaine R. Olen is the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and a co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated." She has been a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and her work has appeared in numerous other publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic. She is managing editor of the American Economic Liberties Project.