Live Nation Illegally Monopolized Ticketing Market, Jury Finds (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0181720998
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/15/1937205/live-nation-illegally-monopolized-ticketing-market-jury-finds
- Source link: https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/15/politics/ticketmaster-live-nation-monopoly-verdict
> The verdict was reached following a lengthy trial in New York federal court that included testimony from top executives in the music and entertainment industries. Jurors began deliberating on Friday. The Justice Department and 39 state attorneys general, including California and New York, and Washington, DC, [3]sued Live Nation in 2024 alleging its combination with Ticketmaster and control of "virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem" have harmed fans, artists, and venues.
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> During the second week of trial, in a move that surprised even the judge, the Justice Department reached a secret settlement with Live Nation. A handful of states signed onto the deal, but more than two dozen proceeded to trial. Under the DOJ deal, Live Nation agreed to allow competitors, like SeatGeek or StubHub, to offer tickets to its events, cap ticketing service fees at 15%, and divest exclusive booking agreements with 13 amphitheaters. The deal includes a $280 million settlement fund for state damages claims for the handful of states that signed onto the deal. The DOJ settlement requires the judge's approval.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/15/politics/ticketmaster-live-nation-monopoly-verdict
[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/09/1930204/live-nation-avoids-ticketmaster-breakup-by-open-sourcing-their-ticketing-model
[3] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/05/23/1446250/us-sues-to-break-up-ticketmaster-owner-live-nation
Justice (Score:2)
Oh look, another monopoly settling for 1/10th of the extra money they made and pinkie swearing to never do it again.
What does this accomplish (Score:3)
It certainly looks like the secret agreement by the DOJ sold the entire lawsuit and US down the river. Ticketmaster gets 15% of all ticket sales and 13 amphitheaters in the US can divest themselves of exclusive booking. I assume this doesn't change a bit what their processing fees and handling fees add above the actual ticket price. On top of all of that, this legitimizes all of the worst behaviors this company had as a newly legalized form of customer fisting.
Ticket prices will always be market value (Score:3)
If you want one of the 50 front row seats to Taylor swift and there are 50 people willing to spend $2000 on the seat, you are not going to get the seat for less than $2000. The market price for the front row is what the 50th highest person will pay.
Live Nation/Ticket Master are a scourge to the artists. The fans will always pay the market price. The artists were the ones getting screwed.
A Dutch auction is probably the fairest way to sell concert tickets. The sale price for the front row of Taylor Swift could start at $50,000 and slowly drop to near zero the day of the concert. However many fans would cry foul. They want the ticket for the price they want to pay, not the most that someone else is willing to pay. Live Nation/Ticket Master make most of their money by putting themselves in the middle of the market inefficiency created by entitled fans. Until the artists are able to sell at the fair market price their will always be a place for scalpers and leaches like Live Nation.
That's not actually how anything works (Score:3)
And this is why I hate people who have blind Faith in the free market.
For the absolute top of the line acts like Taylor Swift the people get obsessed with going to see yeah you have a point.
If you go even one level below Taylor Swift you have a curious situation.
You can actually go to a concert and it's sold out but half empty. That's because you have a concert with a thousand seats and each ticket is being sold for $100 in order to guarantee a sell out, however scalpers buy all the tickets and
A little demand destruction (Score:3)
would be healthy here. But alas, people willing to outbid others destroys any form of pricing sanity. This folks is why I haven't been to a concert since the 80's.
The thing is, concerts aren't something you need to prevent dying of starvation or thirst yet their artificially inflated pricing seems to indicate that they are absolutely necessary for survival.
If you want to be entertained by music, either play your own, or go to open mic concerts. At least you get the chance to directly contribute to the artis
Re: (Score:2)
That may be true in theory, but many artists have goals beyond maximizing ticket revenue for a specific concert. Artists (especially less famous ones) may be more interested in building a fan base than squeezing every cent from their limited (to date) fan base. Other more established artists may just not care as much about the money and just want the fans to be able to have a good time. Pearl Jam famously tried to do a Ticketmaster-free tour with cheap seats and ran into all sorts of obstacles.
With the Dutc
Service Fees (Score:2)
Only a 15% service fee? Even that's obscene. So if they sell a $100 ticket, they're going to charge $15 in service fees? For what? Should be a flat fee capped at something reasonable like $5.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention all the extra labor and effort it takes to sell a $200 ticket than a $100 ticket. So their 15% addon fees will scale with ticket price instead of with their actual costs, since they have no competition to motivate them to do otherwise.
I wonder how Trump will overrule this (Score:2)
I'm assuming they will just write it up to the supreme Court and they will find another which finder general from the 16th century to declare the states somehow don't have the right to regulate antitrust law enforcement violations in their borders.
It's more about the crazy convoluted way our current supreme Court reaches its conclusions than anything else.
Fun fact in order to allow moonshining we are about to completely upend almost 100 years of jurisprudence going back to FDR and eliminate the lega
Meh (Score:2)
So yet another "cost of doing business" settlement that actually benefits no one.
They will just start up another company hidden by a shell company somewhere that pretends to "compete" and slowly drive the others out of business
wild (Score:2)
That's just crazy! Why would a ticket seller/reseller do something like that? What would they gain?