For years, Live Nation’s executives told anyone who would listen that they weren’t a monopoly, just a very large, very successful company with a lot of satisfied customers. On April 15, a federal jury in Manhattan saw through it. After six weeks of trial and four days of deliberation, the jurors found Live Nation and Ticketmaster liable on every count: monopolization of the ticketing market, monopolization of amphitheaters, and, crucially, unlawful tying of Live Nation’s promotion services to its ticketing and amphitheaters. [Ed. note: Live Nation plans to appeal the ruling.]
That last finding is the one that should guide everything that happens next.
The tying verdict is not a legal technicality. It is the lived experience of independent venues, festivals, promoters, fans, and artist managers in America, finally recognized by the courts. And the trial evidence made clear exactly how the tie operates in practice: through Live Nation’s control of tours. The former head of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center testified that his venue switched back to Ticketmaster not because of pressure on any single show, but because Live Nation, which manages artists and books their tours, threatened to pull the entire touring relationship from the arena. John Abbamondi, then CEO of the company that runs Barclays Center, testified that when he called to confirm his arena was leaving Ticketmaster, an “irate” Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino warned him it was “going to be tough to continue delivering concerts to the venue.”
That is the mechanism. Control the tours, and you dictate which venues get the shows. Threaten a venue with losing its touring pipeline, and that venue feels it must sign a ticketing contract you put in front of it. Ticketmaster skims fees on every seat, then profits again when that seat is resold. Live Nation manages the artist, and then can steer them to its preferred venues. The jury found that this architecture is illegal and made Live Nation and Ticketmaster an illegal monopoly. The remedy has to reach that architecture.
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Monetary damages will be part of this lawsuit’s remedy, and this money should flow directly to those Live Nation harmed: independent venues, independent promoters, festivals, and fans. The jury found Ticketmaster overcharged consumers $1.72 on every ticket over four years, a finding that triples under antitrust law, with billions of dollars at stake. That money matters. It will help fans and rebuild a sector in which 64% of independent venues were unprofitable last year. But let’s be honest about what money cannot do. A check, no matter how large, does not restore competition. It does not undo 15 years of contracts signed under duress. It does not give an artist back the tour they never got to route their own way. A fine that Live Nation can earn back in a few days, like the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) paltry $280 million settlement, is not accountability.
The only remedies that match the harm the jury found are structural. Four of them belong in the court’s final order.
First, Ticketmaster must be separated from Live Nation.
The 2010 merger was permitted only under a consent decree that the Justice Department itself found Live Nation had “repeatedly” violated. That decree was modified and strengthened in 2020. Live Nation violated it again. The DOJ’s own 2024 complaint states the decrees “failed to restrain Live Nation and Ticketmaster from violating antitrust laws in increasingly serious ways.” Behavioral remedies have been tried twice against this company. Twice they failed. A third round is not a serious proposal. Undo the merger.
Second, Live Nation must be capped at promoting no more than 50% of any individual artist’s tour.
The trial evidence established that tour control is the leverage that drives everything else. Take the lever away, and independent promoters, regional promoters, and artists themselves finally have a real seat at the routing table. Live Nation cannot credibly call 50% extreme: the company itself agreed to a 50% threshold on ticketing in its settlement with the DOJ. It is their leverage with their tours that actually drives the harm across their market power.
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Third, Live Nation must divest its artist management businesses.
When the same corporation manages the artist, books the tour, owns the venue, and sells the ticket, there is no point in the chain at which an independent competitor can get a fair look. When the company that sells you the ticket also manages the artist, the artist’s team may not be negotiating on the artist’s behalf anymore. It could be negotiating on Live Nation’s.
Fourth, a divestiture that permits Live Nation to immediately re-establish commercial relationships with the entities it was forced to sell is not actually a breakup.
That prohibition must be explicit: no venue Live Nation owns, operates, or exclusively books may use Ticketmaster; no artist managed by a divested management entity may be routed through Live Nation’s promotion or venues; and Live Nation can’t acquire any company without prior legal approval. Without a hard commercial firewall, no revenue-sharing, no data sharing arrangements, no anticompetitive backroom dealing, for no less than 15 years, the breakup changes the org chart and nothing else.
These remedies are proportionate. They are what the jury’s own findings and the trial evidence require. Every one of them is on the table in the remedies phase now underway before the court. Every one of them should be in the final order.
The independent stages I represent, from the amphitheaters that host tens of thousands to the tiny listening rooms that develop the artists Live Nation later profits from, have been asking for justice for years. We asked when Congress held hearings. We asked when the Taylor Swift Eras Tour collapse put Ticketmaster in the spotlight. We asked when the Justice Department walked away from the case a week into this trial, giving Live Nation a sweetheart deal that did nothing to protect independent venues, festivals, and fans. Thirty-four state attorneys general and a New York jury finally got it done.
Here is our vision for the future: an artist books a tour and chooses their own manager, their own promoter, and their own stages, because those should be three separate businesses competing for their business. An independent venue or promoter has a competitive market to book that artist because Live Nation doesn’t have the leverage of owning the room, managing the act, controlling 100% of the tour, and dictating the tickets sold. A fan buys that ticket and pays a fee that a competitive market set, not a monopoly that is funneling tickets out the back door to scalpers.
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This is not a radical vision. It is what a functioning market looks like. The jury gave us the verdict to build it. The court now has to be bold enough to do so.
Stephen Parker is Executive Director of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), the nation’s live association representing independent venues, promoters, and festivals across every community. Parker previously served at the National Governors Association and for Democratic and Republican governors in Virginia.
