Monopolies and Predatory Practices: The Live Nation–Ticketmaster Cases

Jocelyn is an undergraduate student in the Dual BA Program between Sciences Po and Columbia University, studying Economics and Political Science. Her academic interests include public policy, economics, and law.

From teenagers to retirees, concerts and live music draw people from every walk of life. Yet in our current day and age, the concert-going experience has largely been shaped by corporations that dictate how concerts are ticketed and priced.

Live Nation Entertainment, Inc, an American multinational corporation, was founded in 2010 after the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Over the past several years, Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary Ticketmaster have faced increasing amounts of legal scrutiny, with a recent wave of lawsuits filed by federal agencies, state attorneys generals and private consumers challenging the company’s dominant presence in the entertainment industry.

Ticketmaster is the leading provider of concert ticketing services in the United States, controlling approximately 80% of primary ticketing at major concert venues. Between 2019 and 2024 alone, consumers spent more than $82.6 billion purchasing tickets through the platform. In addition to Ticketmaster’s ticketing monopoly, Live Nation maintains exclusive ticketing arrangements with approximately 265 concert venues and manages more than 400 major artists, allowing the company to exert influence over venue locations and how tickets are sold. Thus, it is virtually impossible for an individual interested in live music to avoid the Ticketmaster platform.

In a legal context, both cases illustrate a renewed willingness by federal regulators to challenge digital monopolies, whose market power may harm consumers. If these cases are successful, the DOJ and FTC lawsuits could reveal a shift toward stronger enforcement of antitrust laws and signal a revival of structural remedies against monopolization, such as corporate divestiture. This article examines the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuits against Live Nation-Ticketmaster, specifically within the broader framework of US antitrust law. The primary focus will be on these lawsuits’ implications for competition, pricing, and ultimately equitable access to live music for consumers.

The DOJ Lawsuit:

One of the most significant legal challenges facing Live Nation–Ticketmaster is the US Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit filed in 2024. The Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster is grounded in US antitrust law, which is designed to preserve competitive markets and prevent the abuse of monopoly power. These laws primarily target three forms of conduct: collusion between competing companies, anti-competitive mergers and monopolization. Two primary statutes form the foundation of American antitrust law: the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and the Clayton Act of 1914. The Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits monopolization and authorizes the government to dissolve trusts . The Clayton Act expands these protections by prohibiting anticompetitive mergers, tying arrangements and predatory pricing.

In May of 2024, the US Department of Justice (DOJ), joined by forty state attorneys generals, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster in the Southern District of New York. The complaint alleges that the companies unlawfully monopolized the live entertainment market by controlling ticketing service and venue promotion, amongst other predatory behaviors. The DOJ accuses Live Nation of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act and asks the court to impose Clayton Act remedies, including the possible divestiture of Ticketmaster from Live Nation. This lawsuit represents one of the most aggressive antitrust challenges brought against a mainstream platform in the recent decade. As a result, it has become one of the most prominent antitrust lawsuits in the current entertainment industry.

The DOJ’s complaint centers on claims that Live Nation engages in exclusionary practices designed to preserve its monopoly, particularly by deterring venues from contracting with competing ticketing services. Likewise, state plaintiffs also describe a “Ticketmaster Tax”, or in other words, a non-negotiable fee imposed on consumers. Due to the absence of viable alternatives, this fee cannot be easily avoided. According to the DOJ, this practice suppresses competition and ensures that Ticketmaster remains the only practical option, directly driving up prices for consumers.

In November of 2025, Live Nation moved to dismiss key portions of the complaint, including the plaintiff’s Section 1 tying claim. Under the Sherman Act, an illegal tie occurs when a seller uses power in one market to force buyers to purchase a separate product. The plaintiffs allege that Live Nation uses its control over large amphitheaters—the tying product—to coerce artists into using Live Nation’s concert-promotion services—the tied product. In simpler terms, artists who want to perform at the largest amphitheatres may feel compelled to work with Live Nation’s concert-promotional services in order to secure access to those venues.

However, Live Nation argued that venues—not artists—were the purchasers of the tying product, and therefore artists could not be coerced into using its promotion services. The court rejected this argument, citing artists control where they perform and thus bear the harm of the alleged coercive practices.

Furthermore, Live Nation argued that consumers were too “downstream” from the alleged misconduct, which only targets venues and rival promoters. The court also rejected this claim, determining that consumer overcharges were a “clearly foreseeable” and "cognizable injury”. The court found that consumers are “efficient enforcers” of antitrust law as they are motivated by their “natural economic self-interest” to pay the lowest possible price. Judicial opinion also noted that rival promoters or venues may face barriers to suing Live Nation because of their ongoing business relationships with the company. On March 14, 2025, US District Judge Arun Subramanian denied Live Nation’s motion to dismiss, allowing the DOJ’s antitrust claims to proceed. This decision marked a significant early victory for federal and state enforcers.

Moreover, the possible divestiture of Ticketmaster from Live Nation reflects a previous divestiture seen in the 1982 AT&T monopoly breakup into seven regional companies. Much like the AT&T case, the DOJ’s request for divestiture represents a sort of last resort—following the failure of earlier conduct orders which Ticketmaster repeatedly violated in 2010 and 2019.

The FTC Lawsuit:

While the DOJ lawsuit focuses mainly on monopoly power and antitrust violations, a separate lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission focuses on Live Nation’s alleged deceptive sales practices. In September 2025, the US Federal Trade Commission or FTC and seven states, including Colorado, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah, Florida and Virginia, filed a lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster for violations of Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act (BOTS Act). Although the FTC’s case against Ticketmaster is not explicitly an anti-trust lawsuit, it rests on the premise that Ticketmaster’s monopoly power enables predatory sales tactics which harm artists and consumers.

The FTC alleges that Ticketmaster employs a “bait-and-switch” pricing model by advertising deceptively low ticket prices and then adding mandatory fees, often increasing the total price by 30 percent or more at the final stage of checkout. These fees, which can reach up to 44 percent of the ticket’s original price, were allegedly hidden from consumers until purchase. From 2019 to 2024, the FTC estimates that Ticketmaster collected $16.4 billion in such fees.

The complaint further alleges that Ticketmaster knowingly allows brokers to exceed ticket limits imposed by artists—violating the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act. According to internal documents, the company “turns a blind eye as a matter of policy,” permitting brokers to operate thousands of accounts and amass hundreds of thousands of tickets. An internal review showed that just five brokers controlled 6,345 Ticketmaster accounts and possessed 246,407 concert tickets to 2,594 events. Additionally, the FTC alleges that Ticketmaster profits from the additional fees and markups added to resale tickets by brokers who post illegally obtained tickets for resale on its platform. Meanwhile, Ticketmaster’s TradeDesk software allegedly assists brokers by enabling them to track and aggregate tickets across accounts, even as the company declined to implement more effective identity verification because it was deemed “too effective” at reducing revenue.

Finally, the FTC describes a system of "triple dipping,” in which Ticketmaster collects fees during the initial sale, resale listing, and secondary purchase. Between 2019 and 2024, FTC estimates that Ticketmaster has charged $3.7 billion in fees alone. These practices, the FTC argues, exacerbate consumer harm that is already enabled by Ticketmaster’s market dominance.

Ultimately, these cases raise broader questions about how anti-trust laws should be utilized to protect consumer interests, and shield individuals from the often predatory pricing tactics weaponized by large corporations. The lawsuits against Live Nation Entertainment Inc expose the risks that arise when a single, vertically integrated firm controls essentially every step of the live entertainment process—from promotion to venue ownership to ticket sales. Although live entertainment is not a necessity, its prevalence in modern culture means the outcome of these lawsuits has the potential to affect consumers globally.

The DOJ and FTC actions against Live Nation–Ticketmaster may set an important precedent for other antitrust cases involving large firms across various markets, including ongoing scrutiny of companies such as Google, Zillow, and Redfin. Their outcome will test whether antitrust law and the American legal system truly prioritize consumers from rising prices by limiting monopoly power and preserving competition.

Bibliography:

Sources of law and official documents

Sherman Anti‑Trust Act (1890). National Archives and Records Administration. Act of July 2, 1890; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789–1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives. Accessed January 24, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/sherman-anti-trust-act.

U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives. “The Clayton Antitrust Act.” October 8, 1914. Accessed January 24, 2026. https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/15032424979.

United States of America et al. v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. et al., No. 1:24‑cv‑03973 (S.D.N.Y. March 14, 2025) (opinion and order denying motion to dismiss). U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2024cv03973/621993/483/.

Academic Sources

Federal Trade Commission. “FTC Sues Live Nation and Ticketmaster for Engaging in Illegal Ticket Resale Tactics and Deceiving Artists and Consumers about Price and Ticket Limits.” Federal Trade Commission, September 18, 2025. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-sues-live-nation-ticketmaster-engaging-illegal-ticket-resale-tactics-deceiving-artists-consumers.

Houghton, Bruce. “Updates on All 8 Active Live Nation and Ticketmaster Lawsuits.” Hypebot, January 8, 2026. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2026/01/active-live-nation-and-ticketmaster-lawsuits.html.

Kwoka, John, and Tommaso Valletti. “What Is Bold, Old, and Necessary about the DOJ’s Lawsuit Against Live Nation‑Ticketmaster.” ProMarket, June 6, 2024. https://www.promarket.org/2024/06/06/what-is-bold-old-and-necessary-about-the-dojs-lawsuit-against-live-nation-ticketmaster/.

Lian, Joyce. “Making Concerts Affordable Again: Live Nation‑Ticketmaster Antitrust Lawsuits.” Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, The Issue Spotter, November 24, 2025. https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2025/11/24/making-concerts-affordable-again-live-nation-ticketmaster-antitrust-lawsuits/.

NPR. “FTC Sues Live Nation and Ticketmaster Over Ticket Resales.” NPR, September 18, 2025. Accessed [access date]. https://www.npr.org/2025/09/18/g-s1-89496/ftc-live-nation-ticketmaster-lawsuit-ticket-resales.