Ticketmaster’s Big Loss in Court

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From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily. Three years, music fans have said they felt ripped off by ticket master and a parent company live nation. And last week, a jury ruled that they were right, and that the company is, in fact, a monopoly. And so today, music reporter Ben Sassario rakes down the dramatic trial that unfolded,

but it may mean for concert goers, and why the federal government's handling of the case is now under scrutiny. It's Thursday, April 23rd. Ben, welcome back to the Daily. Thank you.

“You were in the quorum for, I think, six weeks following the trial of probably one of the most”

were vile companies in this country, which is live nation. The case, of course, ended last week with a jury's verdict, so just to start us off, how big of a deal is this? It's a huge deal in the music industry, live nation and ticket master. We're found to be a monopoly in a resounding verdict, and live nation is a colossus

in music. They're a giant company. They put on tens of thousands of concerts all over the world every year.

They sell something like 600 million tickets every year on ticket master.

They own hundreds of venues. They have deals with dozens of artists for their tours. If you saw Beyonce, Coldplay, the weekend, Kendrick Lamar, Metallica, those are a live nation tours. If you saw a tour by an artist working with live nation, you may have seen it in a live

nation venue. You may have bought the ticket from ticket master. While you were at the venue, you bought a hotdog and beer. Live nation may well have gotten some fat money. They sort of touch almost every aspect of live entertainment.

This was a pretty dramatic trial, at least when it came to an anti-trust case, which is a lot of menucia about economics and markets, usually. This case had a lot of twists and turns, and even the fact that it came to a verdict was a bit of a surprise. For a moment there, it looked like live nation was going to be able to settle the case,

but in fact it made its way to the jury, and there was this verdict that they were liable of being a monopoly. When we talk about monopolies, the first kind of companies that come to mind might be tech

“giants, or every other kind of company besides a concert company, right?”

So I sort of wonder why concerts and live nation got on the government's radar specifically. Well, yeah, I think these days, we might think of Google and other big tech companies as being the biggest monopolies that we come across, but this whole question of anti-trust and monopolies goes way back in history, and in some ways, live nation is like the standard oil of concerts and live entertainment, and so in that way, it's not a surprise.

I mean, since live nation and Ticketmaster merge, 16 years ago, there's been eyes on this, both in the music business, but also in kind of policy circles about, was this company too big and too powerful for a basic consumer good?

I also think that Taylor Swift was critical in making this a sort of popular issue among

everyday Americans and also people in Washington. Taylor Swift, I've heard of her, what happened in that situation? So Taylor had her eras tour, and she put tickets on sale back in 2022.

live nation is with everything in the music industry that even an artist that wasn't working

with them still inevitably has to work with them, because she was playing all of these venues that live nation controlled and where Ticketmaster sold the tickets, she had to go through Ticketmaster. The eras tour has become the eras tour. I've spent my whole day from 10 a.m. until this point, trying to get tickets to see Taylor

Swift. And it was a catastrophe after a pre-sale rush forced many to wait for hours, only to encounter error messages that sent them to the back of their huge lines, it crashed.

“It was a big hub of people couldn't get their concert tickets to Taylor Swift, and I think”

it opened a lot of people's eyes to say, what's going on here?

Why can I buy something on Amazon or any other internet site, but it's such a problem when it comes to Ticketmaster? I remember people being furious, and it caught the attention of Washington. There was a Senate judiciary hearing where senators from both parties were really being up on live nation Ticketmaster and asking them very tough questions and were very unsatisfied

with the answers that they were given, and senators from both parties called them a monopoly. We know now that the investigation by the Justice Department was already in motion. So it wasn't begun by Taylor, but that really focused a lot of attention on this all around the country. And so a couple years later, the Justice Department brings their case.

“That all makes sense. You would also said earlier that there were a lot of twists and turns to the case.”

I'd like to understand how this case started off, and how exactly we ended up with this ultimate ruling. The government brought the case in 2024, and they were joined by 40 state attorney generals, which is pretty rare to have that buy-in across blue states and red states. It was a very popular issue all across the country. And the case that the government was making was that because of its scale, because

live nation is so big and that this many tentacles beast, it controls the music industry. It's a monopoly in concert promotion, it's a monopoly in ticketing, it's stymied competition, it's driven up ticket prices for everybody, and that was the case that the government made and brought to trial. So the trial opens and one of the big claims that the government is making is that

live nation threatens venues to use ticket master. And the way they do this is through part of their monopoly, that they have one side of their business that's selling tickets, and one side of their business that's putting on concerts, and that they go to venues and say, you better use ticket master, or else you're not going to get our concerts, and if a venue loses access to those concerts, it would be devastating

for them economically, right? So right off the bat, they make that argument, and there's this really striking testimony about the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, the very first witness in the case is the former head of the Barclay Center, and in 2021, the Barclay Center had been open for almost 10 years, and it had been a ticket master client.

And they decide they want to switch to a different ticket and company called Seekgeek. The jury hears a recording of a phone call where the head of the Barclay Center is on the

phone with the CEO of live nation, Michael Rpino, one of the most powerful people in

music, and Barclay's tells him we're not using ticket master anymore, we're going with this other company, and Rpino's reaction is angry. He's dropping profanities, he's very upset, you hear the anger in his voice, because

“he's feeling what is his interpretation of what they're saying to him?”

Well, he doesn't want to lose the account, it's a prominent venue, right? And they work hard to keep their ticketing deals. So he's very upset that they're losing Barclays, and he says to him, it's going to be a tough time to deliver tickets or concerts, and the head of the Barclay Center testifies that he took that as a threat, saying that if you don't renew your ticket master deal,

you're not going to get our concerts. And he actually follows up and says, after that point, we tracked what we were getting, and we lost live nation concerts, and one of the ones that stood out to him was Billy Eilish, and what happened with Billy Eilish specifically? So Billy Eilish was one of the artists who was on tour right when COVID happened.

On that tour, Billy was supposed to have played Madison Square Garden and Barclays, but

When she comes back on tour two years later, she goes back to Madison Square Garden, but instead of going to Barclays, she goes to the new UBS Arena on Long Island. And the guy who was running Barclays said, to me, that was a smoking gun. That's the word he used. Usually, if an artist has to cancel a show, they make their best efforts to come back

for their fans.

“And he said, we asked live nation, why didn't she come back to our venue?”

And the answer was, it was the artist's decision to go to the other place. But he didn't believe that. And he testified that they reached out to Billy Eilish's manager who told them, no, it was live nation's decision to do this. It sounds like the Barclays CEO heard this, and he connected it to that phone call he had

had with Rapino that he had interpreted as a threat earlier. And that this was making good on that threat, that it was retaliation. And that was one of the big arguments that the government was making, that this company does make threats, and they even follow through with them and retaliate if they don't get what they want.

And that is classic anti-competitive behavior. Right, because they have the size to make these threats make good on them. Were there other threats that stood out to you from the trial? Well, there was one that I wrote about in a separate story about Irvine, California. Irvine had a really popular amphitheater that closed, and the city wanted to build a new one.

And so they got into business with live nation, and they were working out a deal. And the city said, we want to have what's called an open venue, which means any company who wants to put on a show, call us, make a deal. You can put on your show. Live nation was very upset about that, because they wanted to control the bookings.

And the person who testified was not some experienced music industry person. This was a city official who said, they told us that if you don't do it our way, we're going to send concerts around you. This venue will fail.

“So that kind of testimony, I think, made a very strong impression on the jury right off”

the bat. It's easy to be going wild for the government.

They came out with some really powerful testimony that I think buttress the case that they

were making. Now, this is the plaintiffs making their case. We haven't heard live nation's side of the story yet. Okay, so on the face of things, those seem like compelling examples, what you just described. What is live nation arguing in its defense here?

Well, live nation argues, of course, that they are not a monopoly. They say that they don't threaten venues, and that the pricing of all of this, why are concerts expensive, that that's the market at work, that people pay a lot of money for big concerts by famous artists, because they want to see them. And because the artists know that they can charge what the market will bear.

And behind all of this is also the secondary market of ticketing, that for a long time now, the music industry has been able to look at stub hub and all these other secondary markets. And see that somebody who sold their ticket for 200 bucks, now it's being sold for a thousand. So that's part of their general argument that it's not monopoly, it's the market doing

its thing.

Right, they're arguing basically.

This is supply and demand, which sounds pretty reasonable, at least on the surface, right? It does. But as all this is happening in the courtroom, there's sort of a secondary thing playing out in private, where live nation is essentially lobbying the justice department to settle

this case. And that's something that they have been working on for quite a while. They hired some people who are very close to the Trump administration to advocate for them in Washington. It's a guy named Rick Grinnell, who Trump appointed to run the Kennedy Center and then

live nation put on their board of directors. Live nation also hired Kellyanne Conway, who had worked in the first Trump administration to talk to people high up at the Justice Department. And so all of that is going on, mostly hidden from view. To me, those actions that you described hiring Trump allies, essentially, that indicates

a company that sort of nervous and trying to hedge its bets, is that the right way to read it?

“Well, I think live nation certainly looked at this as an existential threat to them, right?”

Like the government wanted their company to be broken up. And so they were doing everything they could to protect that. They were developing their case in court, but they were also trying to settle it.

And that's basically what happens, just a week into the trial when the government seems

to be holding a lot of leverage. It's revealed that the Justice Department did settle with live nation. And there was a lot of drama in the courtroom when this happened, because it seemed to take everyone by surprise, even the Justice Department's litigators in the courtroom said

And the judge was very angry.

He scolded both live nation and the Justice Department, and that made for quite a moment in the courtroom.

“Do we have any idea why the government settled at that moment?”

We do not. And there's still a lot of questions about exactly how this settlement came together. But for live nation, it was a pretty good deal. I mean, first of all, they avoided getting split up, right? That was their biggest concern going into this.

They didn't want the concert part of live nation to be separated from ticket master. They did offer some concessions in their settlement. They said that they were going to loosen up the rules that they had about ticketing to allow other ticketers to work in some of their venues, and also that they would make it easier for artists who were not working with them to put on shows in their venues.

And there was also a pool of money of about $280 million that they were going to offer

to any of the states that signed on. Now this is a company that has revenues of about 25 billion.

“So $280 million, I think that caught people's eye right off the bat, as gee, that seems”

like a fairly low amount of money, especially when the government at that point in the case, was kind of holding a lot of leverage. For live nation, it potentially meant the end of the case that they were able to avoid getting broken up and that the trial might now be over. But that is not what ended up happening.

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You can subscribe at nytimes.com/subscrib. OK, so Ben, how did this trial go from looking like live nation had largely escaped unscathed to them losing so completely by being declared this monopoly? Well, after the settlement is announced, the state attorneys general, these 40 states, most of them object to the settlement, and they feel that it's totally unsatisfactory.

And they decide to push forward, ultimately only six out of the 40 states take that settlement

deal, and since it was just part of them, they only got $18 million.

That was the amount that live nation paid ultimately to those settling states. So the AGs in this moment basically have a choice, whether to take the settlement that the federal government has reached or to continue pursuing litigation on their own with out the help of the federal government? That's exactly right.

So the federal government was going to exit the case, and the Justice Department had led the case. The very lawyers were the ones interviewing the witnesses, giving the opening statements, really running in, and the states knew that they were at a severe disadvantage, and they actually wanted to be able to have more time to continue.

“But the judge said, if you're not settling now, you have to continue the case with our jury.”

So the next Monday, they come back with a new lawyer. The states hired a well-known anti-trust lawyer who had only about a week to prepare for leading this case, but he did it, and they continued bringing the case, even though they would have seemed at that point to be at a disadvantage. How optimistic are the AGs feeling at this moment in time with their new lawyer who's getting

this crash course? The government, as you said, has just dropped out, those were the guys who have been working the hardest for the longest, right? That's exactly right. I think that they felt that the case itself was strong, that there was a great deal of

evidence that supported the accusation that this company was a monopoly, but they knew that it was going to be tricky for them to continue this case, and said, they're worried that this might look strange to the jury that the jury would be confused. Why did the federal government leave where did they go?

But they plowed through, and the first few days you saw a few hiccups, they were stumbling

a little bit, but one of their strategies was emphasize the bullying behavior and emphasize the impact on the consumer. And did they give other examples of that behavior?

“What were sort of their strongest selling points in this moment?”

Well, there were the ones about the venues when it came to ticketing, but there were also a lot of examples of things from emails, where live nation was talking about how do we sort of keep other promoters out of our venues? There was talk about how they would rather have their venues go dark than allow other people to put on a show, they were renewing leases for underperforming venues to prevent

them from getting into the hands of their competitors. Well, one of the most shocking pieces of evidence to be honest was some slack messages from two relatively junior employees at live nation. There was one who worked in Florida, one in Virginia, and it's these two guys exchanging private slack messages, bragging about how they're overcharging people for things like

parking, for VIP ticket upgrades, they say we're gouging people, they call fans so stupid. They use that explicit language.

They use that explicit language, and in the most amazing one, one of them said we're robbing

them blind, baby. Wow. Okay. It's pretty clear. Yeah.

If you ever have that thought, if you work on a company, do not put that in a slack. That's exactly what they did, and it was a terrible embarrassment for live nation, and actually one of these guys was on the stand. He'd been promoted. He's now actually at a senior position at live nation.

He apologized profusely, and I'm sure he was encouraged to say this, but he pointed out he was not following company policy by doing those things.

“But you have to imagine that people on the jury are listening to this in some of them”

go to concerts, and presumably this confirms all of ticket buyers worst fears these slacks. I think they were totally persuasive to the jury, because when they came back with their verdict, it was a very complicated form that they had to go through and answer questions. All together was around 100 questions, and they got really into the weeds about the market definitions, and was it shown that there was a anti-competitive effect on the marketplace,

and all that kind of stuff, and they answered yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, every question that was presented to them, they answered yes. So there's absolutely no wiggle room or inconsistency in it. The jury was completely persuaded by the government's case, and it was a real victory for the states that continued this.

OK, so that's the verdict, live nation, ticket master, they're found pretty convincingly it sounds like to be a monopoly, which as you said at the beginning of the conversation, that's a very big deal. But I think the question for everybody listening Ben is, how does the verdict affect the concert going public?

Like, what can we tell people about how their concert or ticket experience might change going forward?

Well, first of all, this case is not over.

There's going to be a whole separate trial that will happen probably in a few months where the judge will determine what are called the remedies for this.

“That's how his live nation going to be punished, breaking up the company still is on the”

table. That is one option available to the judge. There will also be monetary damages that will go to the states. That will be a heavily contested thing between the government and live nation. There may be appeals and so forth, so we know there's going to be some kind of ramifications

for live nation. I think for average music fans, the big question of what this case, what this case has all been about is, will this lower ticket prices, will this lower fees, will this help me when it comes to my wallet? I think we really don't know that yet.

For the biggest shows, for those Beyonce concerts, for Bruce Springsteen, for the Kendrick Lamar tour, that's where it really gets into that supply and demand dynamics. And it really is about those artists charging what they think they're worth and what fans are willing to pay for it. And what we've seen is that fans will go through anything to see their favorite artists.

If that fan was willing to pay a thousand dollars for that Beyonce ticket yesterday, they might still pay that same thousand dollars. The question is, who gets it? Does live nation get it? Or does somebody else have the opportunity to get that now?

For the last 16 years, we've been living in the live nation regime where they set the rules and they have all the power and prices have gone up, fees have gone up, buying a ticket

I think now there is a chance for that to change that if there's more competition in this business, if live nation isn't the only power in town and somebody else really can compete against them, there is the possibility that that could change. All of that makes sense and given all of that and given the ultimate outcome of the case

that live nation was ultimately declared a monopoly, how should we be thinking about the

government's earlier decision to settle?

“I think there still are a lot of questions.”

Why did they settle? How did that happen? I think the states looked like they carried forward a winning case after the federal government bailed on them.

There's already a lot of questions in Congress, six Democratic senators sent a letter

to the judge asking for him to scrutinize this. There is a legal process that happens when there's an anti-trust settlement that allows the judge to review the settlement to make sure that it's in the public interest. It goes back to a law passed after Watergate and that will be happening in this case. One of the biggest questions here is what happened that led to that settlement, the lobbying

that we were talking about that happened at the highest levels of the Trump Justice Department and may have even included the White House who was involved, who was influenced and was the settlement made in the public interest. Was it a fair resolution to the case that does benefit the public or was there something corrupt about the way it came about?

“That's what those senators were getting at when they sent the letter to the judge saying”

that it looked suspicious. So this case that's already a big deal in the music industry, already a big deal for regular concert goers, may wind up having even wider reverberations in the end. Ben Cessario, thank you so much. Thanks Rachel.

We'll be right back.

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