While Live Nation-Ticketmaster may have entered the year, as they called it, “hopeful” that Donald Trump’s presidency would bode well for its fight against the massive antitrust lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors last May, the company took a hit Friday when a Biden-appointed judge rejected its bid to dismiss a core element of the Justice Department’s complaint.
In a seven-page ruling obtained by Rolling Stone, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian refused to toss the DOJ’s claim that Live Nation coerces artists into using its concert promotion services if they want to perform at venues in the company’s vast network of major amphitheaters.
Subramanian – the same judge who oversaw Sean “Diddy” Combs’ re-arraignment on racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges Friday – found that at this early stage of the government’s lawsuit, prosecutors have sufficiently established their claim that Live Nation engaged in illegal “tying,” the practice of requiring artists to purchase one product or service to gain access to a different product or service.
The judge, based in New York, shot down Live Nation’s argument that it’s not forcing artists into “tying” because it’s actually competing concert promoters hired by artists, not the artists themselves, who rent the venues, and Live Nation has no duty to aid its competitors. “The complaint explains that due to Live Nation’s monopoly power in the large-amphitheater market, artists are effectively locked into using Live Nation as the promoter for a tour that stops at large amphitheaters,” Subramanian wrote.
“The nature of the financial arrangement between promoters and artists is a factual question that can’t be resolved on the pleadings, and the complaint at least suggests that it’s artist-specific,” he wrote. “If the evidence shows that promoters book venues on behalf of specific artists, that artists are the driving force behind which venues to book and when, and that artists are coerced into using Live Nation as their promoter if they want access to Live Nation’s amphitheaters, plaintiffs may have a viable tying claim.”
Lawyers and reps representing Live Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. The DOJ filed the underlying complaint with attorneys general from 29 states and the District of Columbia, painting the concert giant as a mob-like organization and aiming to break it up. In the second part of his decision issued Friday, Judge Subramanian ruled that the states had established their standing to act on behalf of consumers who claim they were overcharged due to Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s alleged anti-competitive practices in the primary ticketing market.
“The thrust of the complaint is that Live Nation engaged in a variety of exclusionary conduct to maintain its monopoly over primary-ticketing services, and consumers suffered injury by using those services and getting overcharged. Whatever market definitions one employs, where a defendant unlawfully maintains its monopoly over a product through a course of exclusionary conduct focusing on that product, consumers of that product alleging that they were overcharged suffer a cognizable injury,” he wrote.
“We are not here today because Live Nation-Ticketmaster‘s conduct is inconvenient, or frustrating. We are here because as we allege that conduct is anti-competitive, and illegal,” Former Attorney General Merrick Garland said when prosecutors first filed the lawsuit last May. “We allege that Live Nation has illegally monopolized markets across the live concert industry in the United States for far too long. It is time to break it up.”
Former Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter initially led the charge for the DOJ. He left the department in December after Trump won the election. Trump’s nominee to replace him, Gail Slater, was confirmed on Tuesday. Unlike Trump’s other appointees, she has been critical of corporate power. Still, it’s not yet clear how she will handle the Biden-era lawsuit’s she’s inheriting.