Coolcaesar, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

On Monday, March 2, jury selection began for the antitrust trial of Live Nation and Ticketmaster began in a Manhattan courthouse, where representatives for the plaintiffs and the U.S. Department of Justice laid the foundation for their arguments for and against the companies’ outsized presence in the live music industry. The suit, filed in 2024 by the Biden administration’s DOJ and 39 state attorneys general, could seek the breakup of the entertainment giant and stand as the most important trial in the business’s history.

“Today, ​the concert ticket industry is broken; in fact, the concert industry itself is broken,” said DOJ attorney David Dahlquist in his opening statement. “It ​is controlled by a monopolist. It is controlled by Live Nation.” 

The Live Nation case advanced to trial with a review two weeks ago by U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, who upheld some of the Justice Department’s central allegations while narrowing the scope of others. Live Nation will be forced to defend its “flywheel” model of interrelated business interests in promotion, management, venue operations and ticketing; prosecutors hold that the company’s mutually reinforcing structure and scale exert monopolistic pressure on the large amphitheatre market and connected “artist-facing” activities through “tying” claims, as well as an alleged monopoly in the venue-facing ticketing market held by Ticketmaster.

Last week, Live Nation filed a motion for postponement, asking that the trial date be delayed as an interlocutory appeal examined Subramian’s determination that the plaintiffs “do not need evidence of actual price discrimination to prove their alleged targeted customer markets in this actual monopolization case.” The company’s petition was dismissed, allowing the trial, which is expected to include testimony by Kid Rock, Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett, and executives from several high-profile venues and ticketing competitors, to proceed as planned.

“The outcome of this ‌trial ⁠will do nothing to lower ticket prices for fans or address the industry issues they care about most,” a Live Nation spokesperson said.

Live Nation’s legal battles persist in several other cases, including the Federal Trade Commission’s suit for illegal ticket resale practices. Read more here.