Ever since President Donald Trump took office, chatter has swirled around whether his Justice Department will continue to pursue breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. It’s an open question, and there are signals both ways.
Trump’s inner circle has voiced support for the previous administration’s antitrust crackdown, with Vice President J.D. Vance openly praising the work of the Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan, and merger enforcers haven’t abandoned their bids to split giant tech companies. On the other side, it appears that the Justice Department won’t sue to block Capital One’s proposed acquisition of Discover Financial Services, which was initially met by concerns that the deal poses competition issues.
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Now, advocates and lawmakers are stepping in.
The American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit supporting more aggressive antitrust enforcement, and the Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition urged the Justice Department on Thursday to proceed with its lawsuit against the live-events behemoth and seek a breakup of the company if it wins. The letter, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, stresses the urgency of the case, detailing the ways in which Live Nation allegedly continues to squeeze fans, artists and independent venues while reporting record revenue and concert profits.
“Through predatory business practices and exclusionary conduct, Live Nation-Ticketmaster has not only reinforced its stranglehold over ticketing, but has also systematically eliminated potential competitors, including rival concert promoters and fan-friendly ticketing services, to insert itself throughout the ecosystem, exacerbating an already untenable situation,” the letter reads.
This follows lawmakers pressing regulators to investigate Live Nation’s deal with Fanatics, allowing Ticketmaster to sell secondary tickets to sporting events through the Fanatics sports app, despite reports that the company was considering entering the ticket resale market. By their thinking, Live Nation entered into the agreement to maintain its monopoly in ticketing.
“Given Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s long history of anticompetitive conduct, we urge you to look into this deal to determine if any antitrust laws were broken and whether consumers were illegally denied the benefits of new competition in this market,” wrote Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) in a letter to Justice Department antitrust division chief Gail Slater publicly released on Tuesday.
At the heart of the Justice Department’s lawsuit: Allegations that Live Nation leverages its unrivaled position as the nation’s largest concert promoter, ticket seller and venue operator to undermine competition. It accused the company of illegally locking venues into exclusive ticketing contracts, pursuing anticompetitive acquisitions and retaliating against rivals who decide to use ticketing services other than Ticketmaster. The government hopes to reduce ticket prices and fees by separating Ticketmaster from Live Nation, which could see its sprawling footprint across all avenues of the live events industry drastically slashed.
In its letter, AELP says fans continue to see escalating fees, a lack of transparency and restrictive arbitration clauses, among other things that also harms artists. It points to what the Justice Department alleged is a “self-reinforcing flywheel” that Live Nation created to leverage its multiple interconnected businesses through the live events industry, allowing it to undercut competition.
Live Nation has consistently denied the DOJ’s allegations, maintaining that the business has grown more competitive since the merger and arguing that the suit “distracts from real solutions that would decrease prices and protect fans” while pointing toward more stringent regulation on ticket scalping and the secondary ticket marketplace.
A major focus of the Justice Department’s lawsuit is Live Nation’s “competitive détente” with Oak View Group, the venue development and management company co-founded by former AEG CEO Tim Leiweke and talent manager and former Live Nation chairman Irving Azoff. (Neither Oak View Group nor Azoff or Leiweke were named as defendants in the suit.)
OVG has a portfolio of over 200 venues across the nation including the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle and Moody Center in Austin. The government claimed Live Nation and OVG colluded by agreeing not to compete against each other for artists and tours. One example: In 2016, Live Nation chief executive Michael Rapino emailed Oak View Group — which offered to promote an artist Live Nation formerly worked with — warning that such competition would lead to artists demanding more compensation in bidding wars, according to the complaint. After the exchange, the company withdrew its bid.
Another point of concern for AELP is Live Nation’s series of acquisitions last year, including the purchases of venues Bell House and the Paramount in New York. Along with lawmakers, it’s also concerned about the company’s deal with Fanatics, which explored building its own ticketing platform before settling on the partnership. On this agreement, Klobuchar and Lee say that the agreement “raises significant concerns” about whether Live Nation leveraged its alleged monopoly power to prevent Fanatics from entering the online ticketing market.
Ticketmaster controls more than 70 percent of all primary tickets sold from NBA and NHL arenas, according to the Justice Department. It’s the primary ticket vendor for 82 percent of the largest performance venues. And of these venues, it owns or operates 64 percent of them. The company has also emerged as one of the largest providers of live event booking and promotional services for both venues and artists.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit draws from the 2009 merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Prior to the deal, Live Nation was Ticketmaster’s largest customer. The merger proposal drew concern from competing concert promoters and venue owners, who claimed at the time that combining Ticketmaster and Live Nation would force them to work with their largest competitor.
The DOJ approved the merger with certain conditions, including a requirement that the company not retaliate against venues for choosing other ticketing services. But in 2019, competition enforcers found that that the company had been violating the agreement by strong-arming venues to accept Ticketmaster’s services as a condition for hosting Live Nation performers, and retaliating against those that refused.
Live Nation has maintained that it has consistently followed the consent decree, settling with the DOJ at the time. AELP claims Live Nation continues to violate that consent decree, which expires this year.
There’s technically no statute of limitations on mergers, but the government must prove that Live Nation has illegally wielded its monopoly in a manner that violates antitrust laws. Simply having a monopoly isn’t inherently illegal. The Federal Communications Commission in 2008, for example, approved the merger between XM and Sirius despite the combined entity being the only licensed satellite radio broadcasting company.
In a February earnings call, Live Nation reported operating income of $825 million last year, with 151 million fans attending over 50,000 events. It brought in total revenue of $23 billion, roughly $19 billion of which generated off of its concert arm.
Asked about high ticket pricing, CFO Joe Berchtold said the artists with stadium tours “are priced at almost perfection,” and that the prices are meant to deter scalpers.
“Since 2022, thousands of Americans have unequivocally called on the DOJ to break up Live Nation/Ticketmaster,” said Morgan Harper, director of policy at the AELP. “The DOJ must continue this case and pursue structural remedies like the public is demanding. Past attempts to cut deals with this giant have been unsuccessful in stopping abuses of independent venues, artists, and fans. Nothing short of a breakup will do.”
