Universal Loathing of Live Nation Might Help Save the DOJ’s Antitrust Lawsuit Under Trump

Given the current political climate, and the pettiness of the incoming president, you’d figure the Trump administration is planning to reverse, as quickly as it can, any and every remotely good thing that happened under Joe Biden’s presidency. In a lot of cases, it’s clear that’s exactly what’s going to happen. But there is one Biden-era development in progress, particularly relevant to music fans, that might be spared: the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster, aimed at breaking up that conglomerate and restoring healthy competition to a live entertainment sector that has languished for years under monopolistic control. 

Of course, nothing is certain. But in the weeks since the election, a feeling of quiet and cautious optimism—on this particular issue, at least—has circulated among some venue owners, and in the constellation of non-profit associations that advocate for the independent side of the live music industry. 

The most concrete and substantial signal Trump has given about his priorities on this front since the election is his pick, last week, of Gail Slater to run the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Unlike other Trump appointments, who sometimes seem chosen specifically for their active hostility toward the departments they are supposed to oversee, Slater has a track record that suggests she actually believes the government has a role to play in protecting Americans from rapacious big-business interests. Nor is she a seething right-wing partisan: Though she is a Republican, she worked for the Federal Trade Commission under both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations before joining up with Trump. 

In his announcement of Slater as assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, Trump chiefly positioned her as someone who will be willing to go after big tech companies—but also hinted at an interest in using antitrust power to regulate monopolies more broadly. “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech,” he wrote in part on Truth Social. “In her new role, Gail will help ensure that our competition laws are enforced, both vigorously and FAIRLY, with clear rules that facilitate, rather than stifle, the ingenuity of our greatest companies. Congratulations Gail - Together, we will Make America Competitive Again!”

Slater has not made a public statement about how she plans to run antitrust at the DOJ, but there are other reasons to be hopeful. (I emailed her to ask about her plans for Live Nation-Ticketmaster in particular; I did not hear back.) I asked Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), a trade group that represents thousands of indie venues, which way he would bet if he had to put money on whether prosecution of the Live Nation suit would proceed under Trump. He answered without hesitation: “I think it’ll go forward. There’s no reason for it not to.” 

Parker’s rationale is compelling. He pointed out that, though the DOJ suit may have been initiated under the Biden administration, opposition to Live Nation’s dominance of the live music sector is not a particularly partisan issue. Thirty-nine states and Washington, D.C., have joined the federal government’s suit as co-complainants against the conglomerate. Over half of their attorneys general are Republicans. 

Among the lawmakers who harshly criticized Live Nation president Joe Berchtold at a 2023 U.S. Senate hearing in the wake of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour ticketing debacle were Republicans John Kennedy, Josh Hawley, and Marsha Blackburn—the latter two of whom are close enough to Trump to have once been rumored as vice-presidential candidates. At one point in the hearing, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, mock-congratulated Berchtold for bringing together both sides “in an absolutely unified cause.”

I also spoke with Kevin Erickson, director of the nonprofit musicians’ rights organization Future of Music Coalition, who was slightly less bullish than Parker, but still optimistic. “This is an unpredictable political environment on so many levels,” Erickson said. “But I can say that if the suit moves forward, I won’t be terribly surprised.” He also noted the nonpartisan nature of the issue, pointing to a 2022 Data for Progress poll in which 87 percent of Democratic respondents and 72 percent of Republican respondents said they support the DOJ’s investigation into Live Nation. Seventy-seven percent of Democrats, and 62 percent of Republicans, went even further, saying they would support the reversal of the 2010 Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. 

To the extent that Trump has a coherent political platform, that platform involves a certain degree of economic populism, or at least the appearance of it. Gail Slater is currently an economic adviser to Vice President-elect JD Vance, whose rise in the Republican party has coincided with a party-wide realization that it can capture the votes of disaffected working-class people who have been alienated by the Democrats’ failure to meaningfully address income inequality. To be absolutely clear, the Republicans will do even less to help these people than the Democrats have, but they’ve gotten pretty good at making it seem like they’re helping. If Trump can take credit for breaking up a company that many of us associate with out-of-control prices, hidden fees, and headache-inducing queues—and that most people seem to think should be broken up—why wouldn’t he take that W?

Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s own leadership, as you might expect, has a different position. In an earnings call just after Trump’s election, Live Nation President Joe Berchtold told investors the company is sanguine about its prospects under the new administration. “We are hopeful that we’ll see a return to the more traditional antitrust approach, where the agencies have generally tried to find ways to solve problems they see with targeted remedies that minimize government intervention in the marketplace,” he said in part. “Obviously, the request to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster would be an example of [a] highly interventionist approach.”

Berchtold is not wrong to point out that the Biden administration’s approach to antitrust has been more “interventionist” than recent Republican and Democratic administrations'. (The 2010 merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster was approved under Obama, after all.) Biden and his appointees have taken a broader view of the government’s antitrust power, both in terms of its purview of enforcement and its goals, than we’ve seen in the U.S. in a long time.

Yet according to artists’-rights advocates, the case against Live Nation is strong, whether you—or the incoming Justice Department—subscribe to this broader view of antitrust or not. “Live Nation is using their significant pulpit to say, What’s happening to us is not normal. We think, with a new administration, it’s going to return to normalcy in terms of antitrust,” NIVA’s Parker said. “But what is happening to them is normal. There is a long record of state attorneys general and the United States Department of Justice bringing cases against alleged monopolies to protect small businesses and consumers and the citizens of the United States. That’s exactly what Republicans and Democrats have done this year, and that’s exactly what they should continue to do, no matter who is president.” 

Future of Music Coalition’s Erickson echoed this idea. “The Live Nation complaint is a relatively straightforward account based on established antitrust principles,” he said. “You don’t have to be on the vanguard of new anti-monopoly thinking to see that the case is solid on the merits, and if it’s competently presented in a jury trial, it should be an easy and popular win.”

If the DOJ does bring its case against Live Nation-Ticketmaster and wins, it would not suddenly turn the live music industry into a utopia of thriving independent venues, affordable tickets for fans, and fair wages for performers. As the nonprofit, non-partisan anti-monopoly organization American Economic Liberties Project has argued, a more thorough fix would be to force Live Nation to spin off all of its constituent businesses—concert promotion, venue ownership and operation, artist management, and ticketing—into independent companies, rather than simply severing Ticketmaster and leaving the rest of the conglomerate intact.

Still, it would be a major step in the right direction. Thomas DeGeorge, the bearded and gruffly good-natured owner of the 400-capacity Tampa, Florida, rock club the Crowbar, is especially attuned to what’s at stake. Talking to him immediately threw into relief the difference between the big-business approach of Live Nation-Ticketmaster and the grassroots nature of venues like his that the conglomerate has placed under threat. In the middle of our conversation, he excused himself for a moment to talk with a staffer about setting up barstools for that night’s show and moving his motorcycle to clear space for the performers to park; it is difficult to imagine Live Nation’s ownership working so hands-on to put on a concert. “When you’re an indie owner, dude, you do it all,” DeGeorge told me. “You could be a counselor, you could be a bodyguard, you could be a plumber. You just do what you need to do to make sure the lights come on, the lights go off, and everybody ends up with a good experience.”

After two decades in operation, the Crowbar will close its doors in 2026, when its lease expires. DeGeorge attributes his club’s impending farewell to a number of factors, including gentrification and rising rents. The list also includes Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s market dominance. The ways in which the conglomerate has made life difficult for small-venue owners are many: As alleged in the DOJ’s lawsuit, Live Nation “possesses and routinely exercises control over which artists perform on what dates at which venues,” and threatens and retaliates against venues that work with promoters and ticketing companies from outside that walled garden. In practical terms for a venue owner, that might mean losing out on opportunities to book popular and money-making shows if you don’t play by Live Nation’s rules—rules that are designed to maximize their own profit above all else.

DeGeorge also partially blames Live Nation for the ways the secondary ticketing market—that is, the multi-billion-dollar industry that quickly scoops up huge numbers of tickets to resell them at an infuriating markup—has cut into his business. The calculus there is complicated, but it’s worth explaining, to give a sense of the extent to which the monopolization of the industry affects everyone involved, even indirectly. According to DeGeorge, when a show at the Crowbar sells out these days, it’s not surprising if anywhere between 15 to 40 percent of the crowd doesn’t actually show up. He suspects that’s because those tickets were purchased by secondary sellers who were not able to find buyers at whatever markup they’re charging—and that actual attendees would have purchased the tickets if they’d had the opportunity to do so at face value. Forty percent fewer attendees than expected means 40 percent less money spent at the venue bar that night—a crucial source of revenue for any independent club. With around 30 sold-out shows per year at the Crowbar, the losses add up quickly.

But why does DeGeorge blame Live Nation for the actions of scalpers the conglomerate has no control over? He believes that, contrary to its public support of efforts to regulate the secondary ticket market, Live Nation isn’t actually particularly invested in seeing it cleaned up. I’ve heard this idea echoed by others in the independent live music space in casual and off-the-record conversations, too. The thinking goes that, for Live Nation-Ticketmaster, a ticket sold is a ticket sold, whether to a scalper or a fan. If the company that effectively controls the industry really wanted the status quo to change, it would find a way to make that happen. “Publicly, a lot of Live Nation’s narrative is, ‘Hey, we want to solve the problem,’” DeGeorge said. “But I don’t know if they really want to solve the problem. It doesn’t hurt their bottom line at all.” 

DeGeorge is hopeful but reserved about the future of the DOJ lawsuit. He pointed out that whatever populist impulse Trump has could easily be offset by a perhaps even more powerful inclination of the president-elect’s: to help his rich buddies get richer. “He’s got a lot of friends in the entertainment industry,” DeGeorge said. “And the lawsuit might be affected by what’s important to them.” To that end, he stresses that it’s important to remain active on other fronts in the fight for the future of independent live music, like advocating for better policy at the state and local levels, and educating the concert-going public about why these battles should matter to them. 

One anecdote that DeGeorge shared with me vividly illustrates the importance of independent venues like the Crowbar to artists and fans, as well as the industry as a whole. Recently, there was a performer at the Crowbar who’d blown up on TikTok, and had never before played in front of a large audience. Before the show, this person had what DeGeorge describes as a nervous breakdown. “It’s not my job, but I care, and I talk these artists off ledges and say, ‘Listen, you’re gonna go out there, and you’re gonna do OK,’” he said. “That’s the whole experience that you get when you grow through rooms like this.” 

Now, perhaps, that artist will be prepared when even bigger rooms come calling. The fans at those bigger rooms will get the good shows they paid for instead of a trainwreck; the artists will continue to grow and sell tickets; the promoters and ticketing companies will make their cuts; the live music industry will continue chugging along instead of crumbling. All because DeGeorge showed up to work that day and took the time for a quick heart-to-heart. Try getting that level of service at a Live Nation room.