Live Nation Is An Illegal Monopoly. Here's What Happens Next

Live Nation and Ticketmaster had a new worst week ever. Here's what happens now.

I’m a little late getting to the major news on Tuesday this week that a federal jury found Live Nation liable for illegally monopolizing parts of the live music ticketing and promotion industry. It was an explosive, landmark ruling, in which every juror found Live Nation liable on every count it was charged with. Ticketmaster sucks, Live Nation makes the entire live music ecosystem less competitive and less accessible for fans, venues, and artists, and it finally got its comeuppance. The jury’s decision validated years of hard work and diligent advocacy by pro-competition advocates to see the company face illegal monopoly charges in court. It’s a major win in the long arch of antimonopoly in America. Everyone who fights against corporate control of our economy and our lives should celebrate.

I wrote a big piece in The Sling, a great publication that covers antitrust and monopoly issues, where I explained the importance and historical relevance of state attorneys general stepping up and trying the Live Nation case to victory. They did a hell of a job, and were imminently wise to hire courtroom superstar Jeff Kessler to lead the prosecution. At times in antimonopoly history in America, states have led the way, and they are clearly in a position to lead today. They need more money, and better state laws, but state enforcers made clear they’re ready and willing to take on monopolies and bad mergers. Read more about that in The Sling.

But the Live Nation trial process is not over yet. The jury found that Live Nation is an illegal monopoly, but the New York federal judge overseeing the case, Arun Subramanian, will now decide what to do about it. The states have asked for break up by at least forcing Live Nation to sell off Ticketmaster, but possibly more. Is that likely to happen — and is it necessary to fix Live Nation’s monopoly abuses? That’s the question that will drive the next portion of this trial and will decide whether music fans, independent venues, and musicians get the relief they deserve, or whether Live Nation will continue ripping off and abusing everyone else in live music.

The decision Subramanian faces seems simple. The jury found that Live Nation had abused its monopoly in ticketing, concert ticketing, and in promoting concerts at big venues around the country. Live Nation relied on the anticompetitive structure of its business, with opportunities for self-preferencing and foreclosure at every turn, to shut out rivals, bully venue owners, and overcharge fans. Were Live Nation not the country’s largest ticketing company, concert promoter, artist manager, and the second-largest venue owner and operator, none of its illegal behavior would be possible. The solution, then, is right in front of our eyes. Break the company up, separate its lines of business, and let each one compete on its own merits.

Subramanian could go another route. He could instead try to fix Live Nation’s monopoly abuse by ordering the company to behave. These kinds of antitrust fixes, called “behavioral remedies” by the antitrust lawyers, have been favored by the pro-bigness crowd as a way to theoretically fix monopoly problems without getting rid of the monopoly itself. Unsurprisingly, they almost never work. They’re expensive and time consuming for courts to administer, they go against the very nature of a profit-maximizing monopoly, and, in Live Nation’s case, have been proven deeply ineffective in the past. When Live Nation was caught abusing its monopoly power back in 2019, the government then chose to ask a court to make Live Nation behave, rather than sue to break the company up. According to testimony at trial, Live Nation was back to its old ways a year later, bullying the owner of the Barclays Center into using Ticketmaster in order to host Live Nation tours and artists. Behavioral remedies are generally bullshit, but in Live Nation’s case, they’re not even a realistic option. As George W Bush famously said: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again.”

But stranger things have happened, unfortunately. A different federal judge found that Google had illegally monopolized online search after trial, then decided that no kind of breakup or divestiture was needed to fix the problem. So there’s always a risk that something funny will happen. But again, Live Nation isn’t Google; it’s monopoly abuse happens purely because of the company’s anticompetitive structure, and breakup is an obvious and immediate fix.

There’s a long time to go before any final decision happens. Live Nation says they’ll appeal, and those appeals will take time to work out in courts. Then there’s the remedies phase, and possible appeals from that. It’s a long road. But we’re off to a great start.

I’ll have lots more on the Live Nation decision soon, including a killer podcast my colleague Danny Caine and I recorded when the decision dropped. As always, we’ll keep you posted.