If you’ve bought concert tickets in the past decade, you know the drill.
You mentally prepare to enter Dante’s Inferno. You set a timer and log on with your computer or phone to purchase tickets the moment they go on sale. Your heart races like you’re a sprinter on the starting blocks. You wait in a virtual queue. You compulsively refresh your screen, fearful of losing your precarious place in an imaginary line. Eventually, the finish line is in sight, and you reach the checkout.
But wait — you discover the price you’ll pay for your concertgoing adventure is higher than you expected because of an opaque set of service fees and other charges.
Under the terms of the settlement, Live Nation avoids the possibility of being forced to separate from its subsidiary, Ticketmaster.
You’re frustrated. But what can you do? You’ve made it this far. Plus, it’s not like you have another choice.
You may think there’s one company to blame for this experience: Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster is a subsidiary of Live Nation Entertainment, which you may have first heard of near the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, when the Department of Justice and a coalition of dozens of states and Washington, D.C., brought a major antitrust suit against the company. The case is complicated but boils down to the simple idea that Live Nation doesn’t just hold an extraordinary amount of power in the live music business, it holds an illegal amount of power.
Live Nation promotes concerts, owns or operates many large venues and sells tickets through Ticketmaster. It controls much of the live music ecosystem and allegedly used that control to box out competitors.
The plaintiffs, both the DOJ and the states, had sought huge structural relief, meaning the breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
But now that is unlikely to happen because the DOJ and Live Nation have reached a settlement agreement.
Under the terms of the settlement, Live Nation avoids the possibility of being forced to separate from its subsidiary, Ticketmaster. Indeed, the settlement could largely be seen as a win for Live Nation, even though the DOJ did extract some promises from it. For instance, Live Nation has said it would cap ticketing service fees at 15%, unwind exclusive booking arrangements tied to a group of amphitheaters, prohibit Live Nation from retaliating against venues that choose to work with competing ticketing companies, and force Ticketmaster to allow other ticketing platforms to connect to its underlying ticketing technology.
A note of caution: The district court judge overseeing this case still has to sign off on the settlement agreement. More than two dozen of the states that joined the suit have indicated that they will not agree to the agreement because it does not require enough from Live Nation. Under the terms of the settlement, it does appear that Live Nation could continue to promote concerts, control many venues and operate Ticketmaster. This leaves Live Nation with enormous market power.
If states opt out of this settlement, the case could proceed without the federal government. But if the past is prologue, states are unlikely to exact the type of structural relief they originally sought against Live Nation. If the past is prologue, states are unlikely to exact the type of structural relief they originally sought against Live Nation. All of this raises the question: What is likely to change when it comes to our concertgoing experiences? I’ll begin with the punch line: Don’t bank on substantially lower prices. The biggest change may be the possibility of buying tickets from companies other than Ticketmaster. Venues and promoters could begin to distribute tickets through different platforms, giving concertgoers more purchasing options. Put another way, perhaps the biggest change will be to the ticket-buying experience. Where does this leave us? At least for the foreseeable future, the price of concert tickets is highly unlikely to plummet. As long as there is still high demand to see popular artists, concert prices will remain high. To a large extent, this is basic economics, not a failure of the legal system. Live Nation’s settlement with the DOJ could create some changes — just not seismic ones. Instead of relying on a single platform, ticket purchasers may see more platforms on which they can buy tickets. More platforms could translate to clearer pricing, more transparency and hopefully fewer technological headaches. But there’s no guarantee. The settlement is closer to your favorite band swapping in one hit song for another, rather than changing its entire set.
Jessica Levinson is a Loyola Law School professor and MS NOW columnist. 
