Trump’s DOJ Embraces Concert Price Gouging in Sweetheart Settlement with Live Nation, Ticketmaster
Trump's administration was always guaranteed to eventually favor whichever side the billionaires were on.
Photo via Unsplash, Anthony DELANOIX Splinter Live Nation
Less than a week ago, an attorney representing the United States Department of Justice began his opening statements in a Manhattan courtroom, arguing that musical giant Live Nation, the company controlling Ticketmaster, was in violation of U.S. antitrust law and needed to be broken up in order to ensure fairness and value for the American consumer. Attorney David Dahlquist, representing the government, told jurors that “Today, the concert ticket industry is broken–in fact, the concert industry itself is broken,” because “it is controlled by a monopolist.”
Less than a week later, the DOJ apparently now believes that nothing in its own case is true, because it has reportedly reached a settlement with Live Nation that would not break up the company, the stated desire of the lawsuit first filed by the Merrick Garland-era DOJ in 2024 following widespread complaints. Instead, the sweetheart deal between the DOJ and the country’s biggest live events powerhouse would see Live Nation agreeing “to change how it makes ticketing deals with venues, allowing those businesses to use multiple vendors to sell tickets to fans, rather than work with Ticketmaster exclusively,” according to The New York Times–something it more or less already previously agreed to do in 2010 when it merged with Ticketmaster. Live Nation would also pay $200 million in damages to the states that joined the settlement, and the company would avoid being broken apart or regulated in any meaningful way. A judge would still need to sign off on the deal, which in this case is not a given.
Regardless, this settlement is, in short, the best possible outcome for Live Nation and its billionaire ownership–which is to say, the outcome that anyone should have expected from the Trump DOJ, which will always land on the side of the oligarchs wherever possible, even in cases where it’s pretending to prosecute them. That’s how we end up with insane stories like RFK Jr. vowing to ban a herbicide, and then being forced to say it’s good when Trump gets in bed with the chemical corporations.
BREAKING: Donald Trump just betrayed every fan who’s been exploited by Ticketmaster.
This fine is less than 1% of Live Nation’s revenue last year AND lets them continue to rip off fans with a 15% “Ticketmaster Tax.” It’s wrong.
We need to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) Mar 9, 2026 at 11:32 AM
A detailed breakdown of the DOJ’s case against Live Nation can be found at Paste Magazine, and I’ll quote the reporting of Casey Epstein-Gross in terms of summing it up:
The case, filed by the DOJ in 2024, accuses Live Nation of running its interconnected empire of concert promotion, venue ownership, artist management, and ticketing services as, essentially, a closed loop designed to ensure that no matter where an artist plays, how a venue sells its tickets, or what a fan pays at checkout, Live Nation gets its massive cut. Ticketmaster handles ticketing at somewhere between 80 and 86 percent of major concert venues in the country, depending on whose math you trust. Live Nation manages upwards of 400 artists, owns or controls more than 265 venues across North America, and reported $25.2 billion in revenue off 159 million ticket sales in 2025. The government wants the two companies split apart—Ticketmaster sold off, the cozy arrangements with venue partner Oak View Group dissolved—so the market can, for the first time in a generation, actually function like one.
Live Nation’s defense, meanwhile, has attempted to argue that the DOJ’s case fails to take into consideration the complexity of its industry, claiming that “artists” and “venues” ultimately receive most of the revenue from its ubiquitous and hated ticket fees … while failing to note that Live Nation is itself the owner or operator of 460 venues, and manages hundreds of those artists. Wherever the money goes, they still clearly extract revenue, at levels higher than the likes of Spotify or Universal Music Group.
Early arguments in the case presented before the jury in Manhattan demonstrated the way that Live Nation has wielded its influence and massive level of control over the industry to punish artists and especially venues for not working exclusively with them. The first witness called by the DOJ was John Abbamondi, former CEO of BSE Global, which operates Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, and he detailed various instances in which Live Nation redirected concerts with its own artists to other venues after the Barclays Center signed a deal with competing ticket seller SeatGeek. That included shows from the likes of Billie Eilish that were originally scheduled at Barclays, but then were rescheduled elsewhere–Abbamondi testified that when the Barclays team brought this information to Eilish’s management, they said it was Live Nation’s choice. Another venue manager testified, meanwhile, that SeatGeek was even attempting to offer something that was literally called “Live Nation retaliation insurance,” in which SeatGeek would promise to compensate venues if Live Nation pulled concerts from its artists off the venue calendar. Does one typically need “retaliation insurance” in an industry that does not involve a monopoly?
But of course, the Trump administration famously doesn’t give a shit about monopolies or antitrust law enforcement. It was only a couple of months ago that the DOJ reached a settlement in its antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, the real estate software company it had accused of enabling landlords to collude to raise rents electronically. In that case, rather than exacting any actual punishment against the software providers or the building owners using that data to collectively set higher and higher rents, the government’s settlement simply decided that “RealPage’s software could no longer use information about current leases to train its algorithm,” making it slightly less efficient at enabling collusion. Live Nation, meanwhile, has been breaking the legal agreement it signed with the Justice Department in 2010 since before the ink was dry, in which it agreed that it was barred from threatening to withhold concerts from venues that don’t sign deals with Ticketmaster. In both cases, the DOJ has simply chosen not to give a shit about enforcing the country’s toothless antitrust laws, because “helping average Americans with the onerous cost of daily living,” or protecting them from exploitation, doesn’t fall within the DOJ’s objectives.
This looks like getting away with a slap on the wrist and a relatively modest tweak to business practices IMO.
www.politico.com/news/2026/03…— George Pearkes (@peark.es) Mar 9, 2026 at 6:04 AM
As referenced earlier, however, this settlement deal isn’t done quite yet. The deal would need the sign-off of the judge overseeing the case, and that U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York may be reluctant to do so. In fact, he seems pretty pissed about the whole thing–particularly the fact that lawyers reportedly told him today that the DOJ and Live Nation signed a deal on Thursday, but told him the opposite on Friday.
“It shows absolute disrespect for the court, the jury and this entire process,” said Judge Arun Subramanian in court on Monday, according to NYT. “It is absolutely unacceptable.”
Attorneys representing some of the 39 states suing Live Nation in the suit, likewise lodged complaints about the potential settlement and said they would seek a mistrial. New York Attorney General Letitia James specifically said that New York would continue to pursue the case regardless.
“We will keep fighting this case without the federal government,” said James. “So that we can secure justice for all those harmed by Live Nation’s monopoly.”
It should come as no surprise to any of us that the Trump DOJ that is on the same side as rent-gouging landlords is also on the side of concert ticket-gouging promoters, as part of the administration’s endless quest to make every single aspect of American life that much more onerous. If Trump and Pam Bondi can make just one more fun concert unaffordable, they’ll clearly consider it a job well done.
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