A federal judge on Wednesday (Feb. 18) refused to dismiss the Justice Department’s sweeping monopoly lawsuit against Live Nation, sending the case to trial next month.
Live Nation had asked Judge Arun Subramanian to end the antitrust lawsuit, which aims to break up the company from its Ticketmaster subsidiary, arguing the feds had uncovered little hard evidence after more than a year of discovery.
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But in his ruling, the judge said the government could proceed to trial on several key accusations, including that Live Nation abused its vast portfolio of amphitheaters to force artists to use its promotion services.
“A reasonable jury could certainly find that artists were coerced into going with Live Nation as their promoter to get into its amphitheaters,” Judge Subramanian wrote in allowing those claims, known as “tying,” to move ahead.
The judge also refused to dismiss the DOJ’s accusation that Live Nation has forced venues into exclusively using Ticketmaster as their primary ticketing service, preventing rival services from growing into challengers.
“Taking all this together, a jury must decide whether the exclusive contracts are the product of coercion (as there’s some evidence for) or venue preference (as there’s some evidence for),” the judge wrote.
Though he allowed the case to move ahead, the judge threw out some other key monopoly claims focused on concert booking and the fan experience. He held that the DOJ failed to properly define a nationwide market for fans, dooming those claims, and that there’s no evidence of Live Nation harming both arenas and amphitheaters with a booking-services monopoly.
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Dan Wall, Live Nation’s head of corporate and regulatory affairs, said in a statement Wednesday that the company is “grateful” the judge narrowed the case and that “with those claims gone, we see no possible basis for breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.”
“We look forward to addressing the remaining claims at trial,” added Wall. “The deficiencies we identified in the government’s monopoly power and conduct claims have not gone away, and we continue to believe that we will prevail in the end.”
The DOJ declined to comment on the ruling. A jury trial is currently scheduled to begin on March 2.
The DOJ and dozens of states filed the case in 2024, with an aim to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster over accusations that they form an illegal monopoly over the live music industry. The feds alleged Live Nation runs an illegal “flywheel” — reaping revenue from ticket buyers, using that money to sign artists, then leveraging that repertoire to lock venues into exclusive ticketing contracts that yield ever more revenue.
In October, after more than 15 months of discovery, Live Nation moved for a so-called summary judgment ruling, arguing there was “barely a molehill” of evidence that it had done anything monopolistic. The DOJ disagreed, arguing it had uncovered numerous examples of the company abusing its market power.
In his ruling allowing the primary ticketing accusations to move ahead on Wednesday, Judge Subramanian pointed to “evidence of coercion” — including “specific instances in which Ticketmaster appears to have threatened venues by conditioning access to artists on the venues picking Ticketmaster as the ticketer.”
“Although Live Nation argues that these threats aren’t specific to exclusivity, a jury could find that it was understood that going with Live Nation meant going with an exclusive deal,” the judge wrote.
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