Lauren Feiner

What has changed?

Because it feels like not going after the one that everyone hates is a big change.

Gail Sater was pretty well respected in the antitrust enforcement community.

A lot of people thought that she would actually continue to pursue the antitrust strategies that Lena Kahn and Jonathan Cantor were going after under the Biden administration.

Are you saying that she got pushed out because she didn't want to settle these cases or that the backroom deals sort of frustrated her and she just left on her own?

Who knows what actually happened here, but it does seem like Live Nation was able to lobby their way into a settlement in a way that usually doesn't happen or should happen.

What they have not been able to do is convince the states to also drop their case.

So which states remain in the case and what are they litigating?

Is it the same as the federal government or is it different?

Is that just political?

You know, state AGs have to run for office.

They get to say, I was the one who stopped Big Bad Ticketmaster.

Is there more political upside if you're a state attorney general trying to go after a ticketmaster than if you're in the Trump administration?

There's a lot of history with Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

This company was formed out of mergers.

Some of those mergers were approved in the Obama administration.

The antitrust lawsuit was obviously brought under the Biden DOJ.

That case, the goal was to break it up, to say we actually made a mistake in the Obama administration by allowing these companies to merge.

The Biden DOJ is going to try to break these companies up and create new kinds of competition.

Is that still the goal of the states?