Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Apatow, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems.
Today we're talking about the major antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, and what it might mean for antitrust and competition law in general now that the Trump Department of Justice has decided to settle its part of the case, even as several states, including New York, California, and Texas, carry on.
Chapter 2: How did the Taylor Swift concert incident lead to the antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster?
To break it all down, I'm joined by Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Finer. Lauren's our resident court expert, by which I mean she's been in the courtroom chronicling this trial from the beginning. If you're a longtime Decoder listener, you might recall an episode we did on Ticketmaster back in 2023, in the wake of the Taylor Swift heiress tour fiasco.
That's when Ticketmaster's website crashed during the first major rush for heiress tour tickets. It was such a scandal, and Swifties are so politically powerful, that Live Nation was dragged in front of Congress after widespread backlash spilled over into the mainstream.
In 2024, the Biden Department of Justice followed up on that scandal by launching an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, seeking to break it up, to split Ticketmaster off from Live Nation to try and combat predatory practices and increasing ticket fees. This case has always seemed like a slam dunk, regardless of partisan affiliation.
Nobody likes Ticketmaster, and breaking up Live Nation would score political points for whoever finally pulled the trigger. It was also supposed to be a sign of strong bipartisan antitrust support.
So even though the Trump DOJ featured all new antitrust leaders, there was good reason to believe that those new folks, in particular Trump antitrust chief Gail Slater, would keep up the pressure, especially against tech companies. You might remember that J.D. Vance used to go around calling for the breakup of Google and saying that he was a fan of Biden FTC chief Lena Kahn.
But nothing about the second Trump administration is predictable or stable. In early February, following the reports of some major tensions at the DOJ, Gail Slater was pushed out. And then just one week into the Live Nation trial, the DOJ settled its portion of the case, shocking many in the industry and extracting only what many see as pretty weak concessions.
Trump himself reportedly intervened in the case directly to demand that speedy settlement, which of course stirred up accusations of outright corruption. But the lawsuit isn't over yet. Because the case against Live Nation included dozens of states, a bunch of attorneys general have refused to give up the fight.
So Live Nation remains in court, fighting off accusations that it operates an illegal monopoly in the ticket business, which is illegally tied to its promotions business, which is illegally tied to its venue business.
But the DOJ settlement raises all sorts of complicated questions about where antitrust policy stands in the United States overall, especially with regard to ongoing cases against big tech companies like Apple and Amazon. Lauren has been tracking all these cases and all these developments in detail, the trial, the settlement, and now the state's continuing the fight.
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Chapter 3: What are the allegations against Live Nation and Ticketmaster?
So let's get into it. Before we start, a quick reminder that you can listen to this episode or any episode of Decoder completely ad-free by subscribing to The Verge. Just go to theverge.com slash subscribe. Okay, Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner on the Live Nation antitrust lawsuit. Here we go.
Lauren Feiner, your senior policy reporter for The Verge and a resident in courtroom experiencer. Because I think what's happening in courtrooms for you right now is just a full existential experience at all times. Welcome to Decoder.
Thank you. Spent a lot of time in courtrooms lately.
All over the country, there are other cases. We can talk about it at a later time. The one I want to talk about with you today is the Live Nation case. The United States government is suing Live Nation, which most people know of, as Ticketmaster for antitrust claims. This seemed like a winner. No one is happy with Ticketmaster.
Chapter 4: What evidence was presented during the trial against Live Nation?
This case sort of dates back to Taylor Swift and the Heiress tour. Like, it was very hard to buy an heiress tour ticket. The sites crashed. Everyone said, well, Ticketmaster is a monopoly. And we stumbled our way into an antitrust case. At a very high level, what is the Department of Justice alleging against Live Nation slash Ticketmaster?
In this case, basically, there's Two main things we're talking about that the government initially went after Live Nation Ticketmaster for. One thing is that they're saying this company used the fact that it owns both the promotions business where artists go to have their tours marketed and sold around the country and their ticketing business, Ticketmaster.
It used the fact that it had both of those to kind of leverage its power with venues across the country. And the second part of this is focused specifically on amphitheaters. Live Nation owns many amphitheaters around the country, or it operates them. And because it controls all of those amphitheaters, it's really hard to book an amphitheater tour without going through Live Nation.
Those things are ways that Live Nation Ticketmaster essentially is able to have this huge amount of power over the concert industry as we know it today, according to the complaint.
So if you're an artist, you have to sign up with Live Nation in order to get access to the venues that it owns. If you run an independent venue and you want to get artists to come put on a show, you have to sign up to use Ticketmaster for your tickets to get access to those artists. And if you just want ticketing, you maybe have to accept Ticketmaster's
Offers of artists and rates in order to run their ticketing platform like they're in control of all of it. What has been the argument that's legal? Just that it's driving up prices, that it's a bad experience when you're trying to buy a Taylor Swift ticket. What has been the main this is bad argument that the government has presented?
In the U.S., it's not illegal to just be a big company and have a lot of power. What is illegal is if you have a dominant share of the market and you use that power in a way that's anti-competitive, that blocks out rivals, that just uses bad behavior, basically, to break the law and make it so that there's less competition in general.
So in this case, some of the things that the government has been talking about that Live Nation Ticketmaster allegedly engages in are things like, having these long exclusive contracts with venues that make it hard for other players to get a foothold in those markets or trying to condition the use of one of its services on another.
So that is really hard, again, for other rivals to try to work with those other elements of the concert industry.
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Chapter 5: How did the DOJ's settlement impact the ongoing antitrust case?
But anyways, I appreciate your time.
All right. Thank you, Michael.
Lauren, that's quite a call. We ran it on like our Instagram and people were like, this just sounds like a negotiation. But the government presented that as evidence of monopoly. What were we hearing there?
What you heard there was the then CEO of the Barclays Center, John Abimondi, talking with the CEO of Live Nation, Michael Rapinoe. And basically, Abimondi was breaking the news that Barclays Center was going to go with SeatGeek over Ticketmaster as its ticketing provider after their contract ended. Now, this was 2021.
The Barclays Center believed that their contract with Ticketmaster would expire that year. Michael Rapinoe disagreed.
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Chapter 6: What role is Donald Trump reported to have played in the settlement?
He felt that there was a clause in that contract triggered because of COVID that should have extended the contract. So Live Nation basically says he was mad that Abhamandi was interpreting this contract differently, and he believed that they shouldn't be able to get out of their contract this early. And that's why he got so angry there.
Abhamandi testified that he took this as a threat and that he took Rapinoe bringing up the threat of losing shows to a new competitor in town as a way of Rapinoe saying, well, if you don't go with Ticketmaster, then, you know, maybe we just won't send you these shows.
And that feels like the tying, right? If you don't sign up for Ticketmaster, the artists that we represent at Live Nation won't come through Barclays Center. They'll go to another venue.
Exactly.
In the courtroom, did that go over as the government intended it to? Could you tell if that was convincing?
We actually heard Live Nation bring up this call in their opening argument, which was interesting because I think that kind of primed us to hear this F-bomb that was alluded to in Live Nation's opening. So I think when we heard it, in a way, it hits a little bit differently because the F-bomb kind of comes at a time that's not really part of this whole UBS arena discussion.
It's about this anger over this clause in the contract being triggered and But at the same time, I think you do, with the context from Abimonde, understand how he might have interpreted this as a threat. But I could definitely see the jury interpreting it either way.
I think as we've seen in those Instagram comments, some people think this is just how business goes and other people think this is an inherent threat.
We need to take a quick break.
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Chapter 7: Which states are continuing the fight against Live Nation, and what are they pursuing?
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Chapter 8: What are the potential outcomes for the states' case against Ticketmaster?
they weren't so into settling cases. They weren't really interested in that. They were interested in pushing the boundaries of how antitrust law is interpreted, and you do that through bringing cases. And that doesn't really seem to be the MO of this administration.
And then we kind of have a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes where, you know, right before this case kicked off, we saw the head of the DOJ antitrust division at the time, Gail Slater, leaving that post. And it was kind of unusual how it happened. She posted on her personal ex account that she was no longer there.
And this was after we heard a lot about this behind the scenes reporting about some backroom deals that went over her head in a completely separate case between HPE and Juniper. And then, you know, in this case, there's been more recent reporting showing that some of that backroom dealmaking might have still been going on around this case as well.
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?
Yeah, I mean, I think based on the reporting that's out there, it seems like there were a lot of disagreements between how Gail Slater wanted to run the antitrust division and how higher ups at the DOJ were willing to engage with lobbyists and corporate entities. And, you know, after this whole separate settlement in the HPE Juniper case happened, the
We saw two of her top deputies fired, and one of them has since come out and basically said there was a scandal here and that there was this backroom dealmaking happening. And, you know, that seems to be something that's raised a lot of suspicions around this case as well and her case. exiting from the agency.
And I should say, of course, the DOJ says that, you know, those deputies were fired because of insubordination and that they put out a pretty nice statement about Slater after she left. And they say that basically this settlement they reached with Live Nation is something that's in the public interest. So that's how they're positioning this deal and what's gone on here.
But I think there's just a lot of flags raised based on what's been happening at the agency these past few months.
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