Fallout from Live Nation-Ticketmaster settlement won’t likely include lower concert ticket prices, antitrust expert says.
Northeastern antitrust expert said the remedies fall far short of the breakup that the government had proposed.
A secret settlement, a furious judge and a trial continuing this week, the Live Nation-Ticketmaster antitrust case has had some unexpected twists.
One thing you can expect, however, is to continue paying through the nose for concert tickets, said Northeastern University antitrust expert John Kwoka.
“I think it’s fair to say that there’s some third-order changes in the way that Ticketmaster will do business and some of them may do some people a little bit of good,” said Kwoka, Neal F. Finnegan distinguished professor of economics at Northeastern University and the consulting economist for states who investigated the merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster that was completed in 2010.
However, Kwoka said, the basic problem (with Ticketmaster) remains.”
The case:
Live Nation promotes concerts, owns or operates many large venues and sells tickets through its subsidiary, Ticketmaster. According to an annual report, Live Nation distributed 646 million tickets through its systems in 2025, and it owned, operated, had exclusive booking rights or an equity interest in 460 venues around the world – 78 of which were amphitheaters.
In 2024, the Biden Administration Justice Department and a coalition of states sued Live Nation Entertainment Inc., and Ticketmaster LLC for “monopolization and other unlawful conduct that thwarts competition in markets across the live entertainment industry.”
The plaintiffs alleged that the company uses a so-called “self-reinforcing flywheel” that ensures its fees set long-term contracts that keep venues from choosing rival ticketers, blocks venues from using multiple ticket sellers and threatens venues with the prospect of losing money and fans if they don’t choose Ticketmaster.
Live Nation has denied the charges and maintained that artists and teams set prices and decide how tickets are sold, according to information published by the company.
The settlement:
On Monday, March 9, Live Nation and the DOJ announced a settlement.
According to the terms, as reported by the parties:
- Live Nation must cap service fees at 15% and allow competing ticketing platforms to connect to its software.
- Live Nation would allow up to 50% of all tickets to be sold through any ticketing marketplace at amphitheaters that Live Nation owns, operates or controls.
- Ticketmaster must stop threatening venues with losing access to concerts if they choose not to use Ticketmaster.
- The company must divest from 13 of its amphitheaters.
- Live Nation has agreed to pay roughly $280 million in civil penalties to the states.
A senior Justice Department official who briefed reporters on background described the settlement as a “win-win for everybody,” according to an Associated Press report on the briefing.
The official said the settlement brought immediate relief to consumers and protected venues from retaliation when they choose Live Nation’s competitors to handle tickets or promote events, the AP reported.
But the settlement came as a surprise to US District Court Judge Arun Subramanian and even the government’s lead attorney.
“It shows absolute disrespect for the court, the jury and this entire process. It’s absolutely unacceptable,” Subramanian told the court after the settlement was announced.
The settlement was also unacceptable to roughly half of the states’ attorneys general, who vowed to continue the case, according to reporting by national news outlets and announcements from individual states.
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Kwoka said the remedies fall far short of the breakup of Ticketmaster and Live Nation that the government had initially proposed. Divesting in 13 of the company’s 80 amphitheaters and paying $280 million when the company made $25.2 billion last year, also does not amount to major changes, he said.
Moreover, “the devil’s in the details,” Kwoka said.
“It’s easier to see how the company can evade it than it is to believe that it will be effective,” Kwoka said of the remedies in the settlement.
But that’s if the settlement even goes through.
Subramanian gave the parties until March 15 to reach a settlement that all sides could agree on. That didn’t happen, and the case continued Monday with the same claims, the same witnesses, the same empaneled jury who has already heard part of the case, and – for the states – an “added burden,” Kwoka said.
“Now the states will have to explain not only what the original problem was, but why they now believe that the tentative settlement isn’t sufficient,” Kwoka said. “Proceeding without the Justice Department because it has settled means a lower probability, lower rate of likely success for the states.”
The fallout:
Kwoka described the fallout from the case as more long-term, however; and he sees politics, rather than legal arguments, at play.
“This was definitely a backroom deal,” Kwoka said. “I think, if anyone doubted how little is left of traditional antitrust matters, lobbyists for Ticketmaster and Live Nation, from all media accounts, were all over the Justice Department on this.”
Kwoka notes lobbyists for the defendants included Kellyanne Conway, who served in the first Trump administration, and that Live Nation recently added Richard Grenell, former president of the Trump Kennedy Center, to its board of directors.
Kwoka added that the “highly respected” attorney who headed the DOJ antitrust division, Gail Slater, was “summarily fired” just before the case went to trial, leading him to predict that the case would end in a settlement.
“The Justice Department now is not really doing what it and the FTC historically have done, which is to judge cases on their merits, on their economic evidence, on the legal theories,” Kwoka said. “The issues aren’t, it turns out, what’s deciding some cases anymore,” he said.
