Trump Lets Live Nation Get Away With Music Industry Murder
And just like that, antitrust cowards kill a slam-dunk monopoly case
I wanted to be optimistic, I really did. Yes, we all knew that antitrust enforcement under the Trump Administration had regressed to George W. Bush-levels of ineptitude and weakness. We knew that Andrew Ferguson, FTC chair and consummate ass kisser, is willing to transform his agency into a culture war-waging laughing stock if it means a chance of Trump appointing him to the federal bench. The Justice Department, meanwhile, has allowed a bunch of awful corporate mergers to happen, while its trustbusting program has all but disappeared. And we know that a cabal of corporate lobbyists forced out former DOJ antitrust boss Gail Slater — deciding, apparently, that even an ineffective antitrust enforcer was more than the oligarchy would tolerate. Now, the lobbyists appear to be fully in charge at the Justice Department, and they’ve been angling for a Live Nation settlement for months. We knew all of this. But still. I thought Ticketmaster might be different.
After all, Ticketmaster is one of the most widely despised companies on the planet. Fans hate the company with a passion. So do many artists. Independent music venues have been fighting against the ticketing monopoly and its parent company, Live Nation, since forever. Republicans and Democrats alike think the company sucks. When the Biden administration sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and the case survived Trump administration chaos and MAGA lobbyists all the way to trial, I thought: This is it. For the first time in a half-century, antitrust is going to break up a company that badly deserves to be broken up.
Welp. As the saying goes, when someone shows you who they are, believe them. A cowardly antitrust enforcer did the cowardly thing yesterday and settled the Live Nation lawsuit, just a week into trial. What Live Nation needs is a breakup, but what it got from the feds instead was an administrative slap on the wrist. I’m not going to dignify the settlement terms with a deep dive here, but suffice to say they make some superficial changes to how Live Nation does business while leaving the extremely anticompetitive structure of the company intact. Live Nation lawyers, executives and shareholders are surely dancing in the C-suite today; they get to keep their live music monopoly intact with very few restraints on how it does business. Fans, artists and venues, meanwhile, get no relief. All that time, taxpayer money, and hope of a better music industry. Wasted.
It’s particularly shameful since the DOJ appeared to be comfortably winning at trial so far. The jury had already heard from a former Barclays Center executive about how Live Nation threatened to pull tours from the arena after it decided to ditch Ticketmaster in favor of a smaller rival. That’s the kind of testimony that speaks to the obvious need for breakup — how dangerous one company can be when it monopolizes ticketing, tours, artist management, and big venues. The clearest case for antitrust liability, that Live Nation leveraged one monopoly to prop up another and vice versa until it dominated the entire live music ecosystem, was already being made. It should have been a slam dunk of a case. All the government had to do was keep going.
Now here we are. What’s next is not super clear to me at the moment. There are dozens of states also prosecuting this, and as I wrote before, these state enforcers have the power to continue the monopoly case against Live Nation even after the feds duck out. Whether that will happen, and even can happen at this trial with this jury, remains to be seen. As always, we’ll keep you posted.
UPDATE: More than two dozen state enforcers, led by New York AG Letitia James, will continue prosecuting the case against Live Nation even without the feds, according to James’ office. The state AGs also complained about the settlement in court and suggested they would ask for a mistrial — which wouldn’t invalidate the settlement, but would reset proceedings for the states to take over.
How frustrating!