Live Nation’s rivals are urging a federal judge to reject the Department of Justice’s proposal for the live entertainment giant to retain ownership of Ticketmaster with new antitrust guardrails.
AEG and SeatGeek have both submitted public comments criticizing the settlement reached by the federal government a week into Live Nation’s blockbuster antitrust trial this spring. State attorneys general continued with the trial, and a jury ultimately held Live Nation liable for monopolizing the live music industry via artist promotion, venue ownership and ticketing. Live Nation denies those claims and has promised to appeal.
Judge Arun Subramanian is now at a crossroads: He can either resolve the matter via the business changes outlined in the DOJ settlement, or he can order the more drastic and rare remedy of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. The states are advocating for a total breakup — as is AEG, a major Live Nation competitor that also promotes concerts, owns venues and has a ticketing service.
“The bottom line is simple: as long as Ticketmaster remains vertically integrated with Live Nation, venues will continue to face pressure to choose Ticketmaster because of Live Nation’s control over content,” reads AEG’s public comment, docketed on Thursday (Sept. 3). “The proposed decree does not address that fundamental incentive structure. Divestiture is needed to restore competition.”
While SeatGeek does not expressly push for a Ticketmaster divestiture in its public comment, the ticketing company similarly argues that the DOJ settlement is insufficient to fix Live Nation’s alleged market dominance. AEG and SeatGeek have both been involved throughout the antitrust case, and executives of both companies testified against Live Nation at trial.
One key dispute in the case is whether Live Nation boxes out competition by pressuring venues to sign exclusive primary ticketing agreements with Ticketmaster. The DOJ settlement addresses this by requiring Ticketmaster to offer non-exclusive contracts and by barring Live Nation from withholding concerts in retaliation from those venues that choose rival ticketers like SeatGeek or AEG’s AXS.
AEG and SeatGeek both argue, however, that Live Nation cannot be trusted to refrain from this type of retaliation. They say the company has promised this to the DOJ twice before — both when it merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 and in a follow-up 2020 deal that imposed additional compliance obligations. According to AEG and SeatGeek, Live Nation did not meaningfully change its business practices then, and it won’t now.
“In purporting to offer major concert venues the freedom to switch portions of their primary ticketing business from Ticketmaster to a rival provider, the proposed final judgment ignores the reality that major concert venues already have the freedom to switch all of their business to a rival provider — but have been unwilling to do so for fear of losing Live Nation concert revenue,” writes SeatGeek in its public comment, filed on Aug. 31 and exclusively obtained by Billboard. “This is a feeble gesture masquerading as a serious solution.”
AEG and SeatGeek also both take issue with the portion of the DOJ settlement that would require Ticketmaster to lend its back-end technology to other ticketers. AEG’s comment argues that rather than open up the market, this would have the “perverse” result of further entrenching Ticketmaster’s dominance by making it “the gatekeeper through which competing providers must operate.”
Alongside these public comments, veteran tour promoter Louis Messina filed a response of his own criticizing Live Nation’s DOJ settlement. Messina, whose company Messina Touring operates in partnership with AEG, says the settlement would not fix the high Ticketmaster fees that provide Live Nation with capital to “throw monopoly money at artists in the form of big guarantees” and box out independent promoters.
Messina also argues that while the settlement requires Live Nation to allow indie promoters into the amphitheaters it owns — addressing another key issue in the antitrust case — this provision is “full of loopholes that could easily allow Live Nation to block another promoter’s access.”
“I am worried. While I am of course worried about the survival of my own business, I am more worried about the entire music industry falling into the hands of one company,” writes Messina in his comment, docketed on Thursday. “I care about this business and the artists I work with. They deserve better and so do the fans. The court should reject the consent decree and order actual relief to save the industry.”
Live Nation has consistently maintained that the DOJ settlement is more than sufficient to resolve the claims in the case. Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vp of corporate and regulatory affairs, said in a Thursday statement to Billboard, “AEG and SeatGeek are Live Nation’s competitors, and their filings advance their own commercial interests, not those of artists, venues or fans.”
“Much of what they say misrepresents the settlement’s terms,” added Wall. “The Department of Justice negotiated this settlement and has said it delivers meaningful relief for consumers. Nothing in these filings changes our confidence that the court will approve it.”