Trump Justice Department Poised to Preserve Ticketmaster Monopoly
The Justice Department is on the verge of settling a monopolization case against Live Nation before a scheduled trial in March, another win for MAGA lobbyists who have worked urgently to get the ticketing and venue giant off the hook for its relentless intimidation tactics and distortion of market power.
Mass public revulsion at Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster makes the likely slap on the wrist politically dicey. “If the DOJ and the U.S. government care whatsoever about fans and citizens, they must continue this case,” said Tommy Dorfman, a former club promoter who alleges that Live Nation muscled him out of the business. “It is one of the few truly bipartisan issues left, because working-class people, fans, and voters across the country are suffering from this monopoly regardless of political party.”
The imminent settlement of the high-profile case has once again triggered tumult inside the Justice Department between Antitrust Division lawyers who are more wary of lobbyist-driven decision-making and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office, which is eager to please Trump allies and vested interests.
Last week, Antitrust Division chief Gail Slater said goodbye on social media to her chief of staff, Sara Matar, whose contract had expired. But Slater was overruled by Bondi, Matar was retained, and Slater had to delete her post. Then on Monday, the number two official at DOJ Antitrust, Mark Hamer, quit his position and returned to the private sector; he had only started the job last March. One insider called the resignation “a sad day for the DOJ.”
Hamer wasn’t some longtime crusader—he rose to the number two position in the division after Roger Alford was fired for resisting sweetheart settlements in antitrust cases. Last August, Alford spoke publicly about the lobbyist corruption, and warned that “Live Nation and Ticketmaster have paid a bevy of cozy MAGA friends to roam the halls of the [Justice Department building’s] Fifth Floor in defense of their monopoly abuses.”
Mass public revulsion at Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster makes the likely slap on the wrist politically dicey.
Those friends include former acting director of national intelligence under Trump, presidential envoy, and Kennedy Center president Ric Grenell, who was named to the Live Nation board last May. It also includes former Trump campaign manager and senior aide Kellyanne Conway and attorney/MAGA influencer Mike Davis, who reportedly earned a $1 million “success fee” for getting DOJ to drop its challenge to the $14 billion Hewlett Packard Enterprise–Juniper Networks merger. That settlement is now getting a federal hearing in March, where state attorneys general will depose key participants in the scheme, including Davis and MAGA consultant Arthur Schwartz.
Sources tell the Prospect that Davis also earned at least $1 million by persuading the Justice Department to allow a merger between Compass and Anywhere Real Estate, the two largest real estate brokerages by volume in 2024, despite objections from Antitrust Division attorneys. This pattern—antitrust enforcers wanting to scrutinize deals or pursue monopolization cases, and Bondi’s team, compelled by Davis and other Trump allies, going over their heads—is now recurring in the Live Nation case.
President Trump issued an executive order last year demanding a crackdown on price-gouging in event ticketing, making Davis’s advocacy for Live Nation, the company that dominates the space, even more embarrassing.
Davis did not respond to a request for comment.
THE LAWSUIT AGAINST LIVE NATION/TICKETMASTER, filed in 2024 by DOJ, 29 states, and the District of Columbia, alleged that the company, which owns or controls venues, ticketing, artist management, and concert promotion, uses this vertically integrated power to overcharge fans, shortchange independent promoters and venues, and lock the biggest names in entertainment into their sphere of influence. Two separate consent decrees that attempted to safeguard competition in the industry have manifestly failed. (There are now 40 states partnering on the case.)
Live Nation provides ticketing for more than 80 percent of the nation’s primary concert venues, owns or controls more than 330 venues directly, and manages over 400 top-name artists. This level of dominance allows for exploitation of the various conflicts of interest, DOJ wrote in its initial complaint. The lawsuit concluded: “Conduct that subverts competition here not only harms the structure of the live music industry and the countless people that work in that industry, but also damages the foundation of creative expression and art that lies at the heart of our personal, social, and political lives.”
Much of the lawsuit details the behind-the-scenes work Live Nation engages in to cement its “flywheel” of integrated monopoly. This has catastrophic effects for just about everyone associated with the live entertainment business. It is virtually impossible for artists to do major tours without involving Live Nation or Ticketmaster, and most independent promoters have been forced out.
That includes Dorfman, who booked dance music events in New Jersey and elsewhere until Live Nation, just months after its Ticketmaster merger in 2010, asked to partner with him on an electronic music festival he was producing for the Meadowlands fairgrounds complex, a venue where the company controlled ticketing. When Dorfman refused, he claims that Live Nation pressured artists to avoid the festival and revoked access to its ticketing platform. The festival collapsed as artists dropped out.
“I am one of the first victims of the merger,” Dorfman told me.
He was eventually pushed out of the industry and now sells cable and internet service in Massachusetts. His lawsuit against Live Nation, which has been going on for over a decade, does not yet have a trial date. Live Nation contends that the festival fell apart on its own and it never discouraged artists or defamed his work, and the company has been successful in using its army of lawyers to limit damages. But Dorfman has been dogged in extending his story into a larger tale that offers insight into Live Nation’s inner workings.
Dorfman enlisted an expert witness named Dr. Richard Barnet, who in 2019 released a report showing that Live Nation engages in secret side deals with vendors that inflated costs to make it look like the co-promoted events weren’t profitable. Later, Live Nation would get kickbacks from the vendors, meaning co-promoters like Dorfman would be left with nothing while Live Nation would walk away with all the profits. Other rebates to Live Nation came from every ticket sold, and were not shared with co-promoters or the artists. These rebates were found in a curious line item in Live Nation’s accounting disclosures called “contribution margin.”
“My expert confirms two sets of books, conduct that only the Mafia in its heyday could get away with,” Dorfman said.
This conduct is also present in DOJ’s lawsuit, which details alleged collusion with Oak View Group, described as a “pimp” for Live Nation. Oak View’s then-CEO Timothy Leiweke wrote in internal communications with Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino that “we 100% always protect you and LN on your lanes … I always protect you on rebates, promoter position, ticketing.” At another point, Lieweke wrote, “I never want to be competitors.”
Instead of competing for promotions, Live Nation and Oak View worked together, the lawsuit claims, ensuring that their artists use Ticketmaster and other Live Nation services. This collusion was explicitly seen as better for the companies and worse for artists, who would not be able to play the promoters off one another for a greater cut of revenues.
And like in Dorfman’s case, DOJ cites examples of Live Nation retaliating against competing companies that it couldn’t get to collude with them, including attempting to deny entry to the L.A. Coliseum to fans who bought tickets to a 2021 event on StubHub, a competing ticket platform. The artist management company that opted for StubHub instead of Ticketmaster eventually backed down. Other examples of this conduct, including cutting venues and promoters off from its artists, are present in the suit.
DOJ CALLED FOR A BREAKUP OF LIVE NATION’S business lines, so it could not leverage them to get favorable deals for itself at the expense of promoters, venues, artists, and fans. But MAGA’s lobbying machine had already wounded the case. Lieweke got an official Trump pardon in December after being indicted in June for “orchestrating a conspiracy to rig the bidding process for an arena.” Former Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy represented Lieweke in the case, lobbying the Justice Department for the pardon.
Now Davis, Conway, and other MAGA hangers-on are providing the same service to effectively get Live Nation a corporate pardon.
“There is a proven track record that Live Nation believes it is above the law and based on history, it often seems they are treated that way,” Dorfman said. “Who really believes Live Nation would not violate another settlement?” He added that a settlement would lead to the elimination of all independent promoters within five years. And this would have downstream effects on fan prices. Just last September, Live Nation CEO Rapino said at a conference that music tickets, which have soared in recent years, were “underpriced.” Said Dorfman: “John Gotti would not have had the nerve to say that while facing potential charges.”
Dan Wall, the chief lobbyist for Live Nation, agreed with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) last month in a Senate hearing that the monopolization case should be decided on the facts rather than due to lobbyist pressure. Yet lobbyists appear to be driving the outcome.
Advocates have expressed alarm that the Justice Department would settle the case. “There is no pathway to restore competition in ticketing and live performance across America without Live Nation’s breakup,” said Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA).
While at least some of the 40 states would undoubtedly continue the lawsuit, a settlement from the federal partner would damage the effort and drain resources. The Federal Trade Commission also sued Live Nation over a deceptive pricing and resale scheme last September, but it is merely seeking civil penalties (a cut of the profits, basically), not a structural breakup of the company.
The imminent settlement also undermines the other work federal antitrust enforcers are doing, given that powerful interests can get their way in the Trump administration so effortlessly. The White House is allegedly considering an antitrust investigation into homebuilders to further Trump’s affordability agenda, is appealing unfavorable rulings in monopolization cases against Meta and Google, and is reportedly casting a “wide net” over Netflix’s business practices as it investigates its proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. But setting aside the politicization of antitrust inherent in most if not all of those cases, the tough talk is simply not credible if MAGA lobbyists can take $1 million from aspirant monopolists and get Pam Bondi to do whatever they ask for.
In that same Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Brian Berry of the Ticket Policy Forum said the case “will answer the question of whether or not a monopoly can be held accountable and do better, or run roughshod over our government and the market.” We are trending toward the latter.
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