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Live Nation will have to face the antitrust music, a federal jury in New York ruled this week, declaring that America’s preeminent concert middleman is an illegal monopoly. This was not news to those of us who’ve attended a concert in the past, oh, dozen years. You could score a ticket to Celine Dion’s comeback tour with all the money I’ve tithed to Live Nation in service fees and charges.
The verdict is an important recognition, however, that all is not well on America’s concert scene. So this morning, we’re taking a look at why live music got so expensive — and how this verdict could change things.
Before we get into the issues in the case, let’s tackle the marquee question: No, this verdict won’t (immediately, or even necessarily) lower ticket prices. The court hasn’t assessed penalties yet. And Live Nation has already signaled it will likely appeal. But the case could still, over time, chip away at Live Nation’s dominance in the live music market.
How much of the industry does Live Nation control, anyway?
A lot of it. Too much of it, according to this verdict. Since 2010, when Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged, the combined company has dominated not just ticketing, but venue management, artist management, and event promotion in the US.
This lawsuit alleged that Live Nation controlled, as of 2024, about 60 percent of the market for concert promotion and 70 percent for ticketing. It also operated almost 80 percent of the country’s top arenas and managed more than 400 artists, locking both performers and venues into exclusive contracts that made it hard for alternatives to compete.
How does Live Nation’s monopoly hurt consumers?
As Emily Stewart wrote for Vox in 2023, companies with this much market power don’t really need to compete on price or quality. Just look at the sorry state of concert tickets.
Live Nation has taken particular heat over the service fees it tacks onto ticket prices, which vary by venue and event but always seem a little too high to be fair. The federal jury in New York found that the company had overcharged customers $1.72 per ticket, on average.
Ticketmaster’s glitchy software has also drawn scrutiny — most visibly, and controversially, before the start of Taylor Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour. Widespread site outages prevented many US fans from securing concert tickets, and, well…if there’s one fan base you don’t want to cross, it’s probably Swift’s.
Swift is just one of many, many touring artists who’ve complained about Live Nation and Ticketmaster over the years, typically accusing the company of making their tours inaccessible to fans. In 2022, the country singer Zach Bryan even dropped an album titled All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster. (Despite that, only one artist testified during the trial: Ben Lovett, of Mumford & Sons, who is also a venue operator.)
What will this verdict do about it all?
That remains to be seen. This lawsuit began under the Biden administration, which argued it was “time to break [Live Nation] up.” The Trump administration has taken a different approach, withdrawing from the suit and inking a tentative settlement deal in early March. But more than 30 states continued the case, without the Department of Justice, hence Wednesday’s verdict.
Judge Arun Subramanian can now impose financial penalties or mandate changes to Live Nation’s business. The company could be required to reimburse some consumers, for instance, or to divest some venues. In an “ideal scenario,” one antitrust policy analyst told my colleague Alex Abad-Santos in 2022, a judge would unwind the merger that created Live Nation 16 years ago. But no major American company has been broken up as a result of antitrust litigation since AT&T in 1984.
What would breaking up Live Nation accomplish?
Live Nation would presumably argue that splitting it up achieves nothing at all. In a statement to Rolling Stone earlier this week, the company said that “there is no evidence in the record that Live Nation or Ticketmaster drives higher ticket prices or that breaking up the company would lower them.” One common justification for vertical mergers, like the Live Nation/Ticketmaster behemoth, is that they create efficiencies that benefit consumers.
Antitrust experts are skeptical, however, saying those benefits rarely pan out. They argue that breaking up Live Nation would disrupt its web of exclusive contracts, restore competition, and give smaller venues and ticketing companies a chance — potentially lowering ticket prices and raising wages for workers at both venues and ticketing services.
A split wouldn’t solve everything, though. On their own, Ticketmaster and Live Nation are still big enough to exert considerable influence over ticket prices and availability. (In fact, both were subject to complaints on those scores before they merged into one company.)
Live Nation’s dominance also isn’t the only reason that concerts have gotten so expensive. As Whizy Kim wrote for Vox in 2024, the demand for top concert tickets far outstrips supply, driving up the cost of tickets on both the primary market and the (booming, often predatory) secondary market. By one calculation, the average ticket price for a top-100 music tour skyrocketed from $40.74 in 2000 to $122.84 in 2023, well outpacing inflation.
Is there any other way to bring ticket prices down?
Kim proffered one counterintuitive solution: Make tickets even more expensive at their initial point of sale. Raising their face value undercuts scalpers, who jack up prices even higher on resale.
Other solutions might include releasing more tickets to general fans instead of holding reserves for presales or VIPs and restricting or regulating the secondary market. Some states have attempted to legislate these issues, while a bipartisan bill that overwhelmingly passed the House last year would mandate more transparency around added charges. Last March, President Donald Trump also signed an executive order directing the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on ticket resellers.
Alas, none of that will help you if you’re trying to catch some live music this weekend. But take solace in the fact that concertgoers just scored — in the words of many gloating state attorneys general — a “historic” win over the rogue forces of monopolization.