Amna Nawaz:
A federal jury has found Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster have been operating as a monopoly in violation of federal and state laws. It’s the long-awaited conclusion to a blockbuster antitrust trial that could have big implications for both the company and the entertainment industry at large.
Dozens of states were party to the suit, which argued that Live Nation used its combined control of ticketing platforms and a nationwide network of concert venues to force artists into bad deals and drive up prices for consumers.
For more on this, we’re joined by Jem Aswad. He’s music editor at “Variety.”
Jem, thanks so much for being with us.
Before we get into details, just for context here, how big a moment is this for Live Nation, Ticketmaster, and the industry?
Jem Aswad:
It is a big moment, but nobody knows yet what exactly it is going to mean. It is very much a rebuke to the Department of Justice’s decision early last month to settle with Live Nation and have them modify some of their policies and pay a few fines.
I think it was $260 million, which Live Nation earns in a couple of days.
Amna Nawaz:
We should point out that suit was first filed by the Biden administration. That’s when the DOJ was involved. When the Trump administration came into office, the DOJ a few days in walked away. The state decided to continue with that lawsuit, which is how we ended up where we are today.
But, in retrospect, that settlement that they reached, how does that look right now?
Jem Aswad:
Well, it was never approved by the judge. This is all being decided by one judge. Arun Subramanian I think is how you say his name. And he was furious over the settlement because it was basically done in a smoke-filled room.
There was a deal between DOJ officials and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and presumably some other people. And the judge didn’t even know. So he was furious over that. And the states decided to continue pushing ahead.
Now, does this mean that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are going to be broken up and tickets are going to get a lot cheaper? Absolutely not.
Amna Nawaz:
We will get into more on that and what we could expect ahead in just a moment.
But I want to remind folks about what the argument was here behind the monopoly prosecution. So, DOJ was basically arguing that they were stifling innovation, they were causing higher prices for consumers. Remind people how they were doing that. What were the actual practices they were alleged to have engaged in?
Jem Aswad:
I mean, there are so many, it’s a little hard to begin.
The practices that they were really being criticized for really only trickled down to consumers, quite honestly. But it was things like — I don’t — I got to be careful with the verbs here. Like, persuading venues to use Ticketmaster, their ticketing service.
And Rapino is heard in a recorded phone call kind of threatening a venue by saying, well, if you don’t go with Ticketmaster and you go with our competitor, boy, I don’t know, we’re going to have a hard time routing some of our big artists to your venue. And that venue is Barclays Center in Brooklyn, one of the biggest arenas in the tristate area.
Amna Nawaz:
Rapino, we should note, is the head of Live Nation. And those stories I know were reported on for so long.
As you mentioned, though, we do not yet know what the remedies could be. We should point out in the verdict that the jury found Ticketmaster overcharged consumers by about $1.72 a ticket. Is there a chance here that concertgoers could see some of their money coming back?
Jem Aswad:
It is really hard to say. It’s very early in this process, quite honestly.
And we need to be fair to Live Nation here. They did not create this system. The problem stems from when ticketing went online, because, before, when it was just hard tickets, you couldn’t have a bot buying up thousands of tickets and flipping them for exponentially more than their face value.
And Live Nation has tried to fight that syndrome. Sometimes, they’re successful. Sometimes, they’re not. They’re up against the most sophisticated bots in the world. So, in sympathy to them, they are trying to keep things in the stakeholders, the people who actually put money and have skin in the game with putting on shows, venues, artists, managers, promoters, people like that, instead of bots and scalpers.
But they do play rough. And, I mean, this is a capitalist society. We’re allowed to push the limits to a degree. But the question here is whether they pushed them too far. And the jury today found that they did.
Amna Nawaz:
Live Nation has inarguably been an absolute force in this industry, right? According to some of the trial testimony, they sold about 10 times the number of tickets as the next closest competitor.
What else have we heard from them over the course of this trial? What’s been their response to the accusations about their practices?
Jem Aswad:
Oh, throughout, they have been saying, we’re not a monopoly. We play rough. They don’t say, we play rough. They say, we’re competitive and we’re aggressive, all of which is certainly true and somewhat defensible.
But when you start getting into some of the details, like with them trying to explain away those famous Slack messages where people are saying, oh, my gosh, can you believe these suckers, meaning concertgoers paying for tickets. It wasn’t that exactly words — exactly those words, but it was the sentiment.
The particulars, they were less strong on. But, generally, they’re just saying, we are not a monopoly. They dispute a lot of the numbers, the percentages of how much of the ticketing market they have. The prosecution said it was about 86 percent. They said, oh, no, no, no, it’s more like 44 percent.
And with anything like that, it’s how you slice and dice the numbers. But they have basically been saying, we are playing by the rules. And it is up to the jury to decide whether or not they believe that.
Amna Nawaz:
We will see what happens next.
That is Jem Aswad, music editor for “Variety.”
Jem, thank you so much.
Jem Aswad:
Thank you.
