Even according to the law Live Nation is an illegal monopoly A Manhattan jury has ruled

If you have bought a concert ticket over the past twenty years, chances are you did so through Ticketmaster or TicketOne. The former is owned by the American multinational Live Nation, while the latter is technically a competitor but, over time, has ended up operating within the same ecosystem in order to keep up with an increasingly concentrated market. Because competition, quite simply, does not exist, as a federal jury in Manhattan has ruled that Live Nation has built an illegal monopoly over the entire concert industry in the United States.

Is Live Nation a monopoly?

The short answer is yes, at least according to the federal jury in Manhattan, which on Wednesday concluded one of the most closely watched antitrust trials in recent years in the United States. As reported by the New York Times, after seven weeks of hearings and four days of deliberations, jurors found that Live Nation operated as an illegal monopoly violating federal and state laws, siding with the 34 U.S. states that had brought the case. This is not a final ruling in practical terms, as Judge Arun Subramanian will now decide what the concrete consequences will be, but the verdict opens up scenarios that until recently seemed unthinkable, including the possible separation of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

According to what was also reported by the Guardian, the core of the accusation has always been the so-called “flywheel” model, meaning the integrated system through which Live Nation controls multiple levels of the supply chain, from tour promotion to venue management to ticket sales. A mechanism that, on paper, creates efficiency, but in practice allegedly crushed competition, preventing other operators from truly competing. During the trial it emerged that Ticketmaster sells about ten times more tickets than its closest rival, while Live Nation manages or has stakes in hundreds of venues and organizes tens of thousands of events every year.

Live Nation accused of raising prices for consumers

The jury also quantified the damage to consumers, determining that Ticketmaster charged on average $1.72 more per ticket sold – not to be confused with Dynamic Pricing – a figure that, when multiplied across hundreds of millions of tickets, becomes a massive economic impact. Live Nation has consistently denied the allegations, arguing that it operates in a competitive market and does not impose constraints on venues or artists, but the trial also brought to light more opaque practices, including pressure on partners and strategies to circumvent fee regulations – an accusation that (coincidentally) first emerged two years ago among Taylor Swift fans during the Eras Tour.

The situation in Italy

The lawsuit in the United States could create a chain reaction that may soon reach countries in the European Union. While in the U.S. the issue has already gone to court, in Italy last February Live Nation acquired the Unipol Forum in Assago, one of the most important venues in the country for major international and national concerts, along with the Carroponte and the Teatro Repower. Here too, the model tends to replicate itself, with a single player increasingly controlling more links in the chain - from event production to the venues where they take place, all the way to ticket sales. There is not yet a lawsuit similar to the American one, and the European regulatory context is different, but already in 2024, for the Oasis reunion, the UK government had stepped in to address Ticketmaster’s practices in order to protect fans.