Ben Cesario

We want to have what's called an open venue, which means any company who wants to put on a show, call us, make a deal, you can put on your show.

Live Nation was very upset about that because they wanted to control the bookings.

And the person who testified was not some experienced music industry person.

This was a city official who said they told us that if you don't do it our way, we're going to send concerts around you.

This venue will fail.

So that kind of testimony, I think, made a very strong impression on the jury right off the bat.

It seemed to be going well for the government.

They came out with some really powerful testimony that I think buttressed the case that they were making.

Now, this is the plaintiffs making their case.

We hadn't heard Live Nation's side of the story yet.

Well, Live Nation argues, of course, that they are not a monopoly.

They say that they don't threaten venues and that the pricing of all of this, why are concerts expensive, that that's the market at work.

that people pay a lot of money for big concerts by famous artists because they want to see them and because the artists know that they can charge what the market will bear.

Behind all of this is also the secondary market of ticketing that for a long time now, the music industry has been able to look at StubHub and all these other secondary market sites and see that somebody who sold their ticket for 200 bucks,

Now it's being sold for $1,000.

So that's part of their general argument, that it's not monopoly.

It's the market doing its thing.

But...

As all this is happening in the courtroom, there's sort of a secondary thing playing out in private where Live Nation is essentially lobbying the Justice Department to settle this case.

And that's something that they have been working on for quite a while.