The Future of Antitrust Policy

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Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it compliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Get started at vanta.com/slash cal m. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil I Patel, editor-in-chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today we're talking about the major antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, and what it might mean for antitrust and competition law in general, now that the Trump Department of Justice has decided to settle its part of the case, even as several states, including New York, California, and Texas, carry on. To break it all down, I'm joined by Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Finer. Lauren's our resident court expert, by which I mean she's been in the courtroom, chronicling this trial from the beginning. If you're a longtime decoder listener, you might recall an episode we did on Ticketmaster back in 2023, in the wake of the Taylor Swift Aeros Tour fiasco. That's when Ticketmaster's website crashed during the first major rush for Aeros Tour tickets. It was such a scandal, and Swifties are so politically powerful, that Live Nation was dragged in front of Congress after a widespread backlash spilled over into the mainstream. In 2024, the Biden Department of Justice followed up on that scandal by launching an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, seeking to break it up, to split Ticketmaster off from Live Nation, to try and combat predatory practices and increasing ticket fees. This case has always seemed like a slam dunk, regardless of partisan affiliation. Nobody likes Ticketmaster, and breaking up Live Nation would score political points for whoever finally pulled the trigger. It was also supposed to be a sign of strong bipartisan antitrust support. So, even though the Trump DOJ featured all new antitrust leaders, there was good reason to believe that those new folks, in particular Trump antitrust chief Gail Slater, would keep up the pressure, especially against tech companies. You might remember that J.D. Vance used to go around calling for the breakup of Google and saying that he was a fan of Biden FTC chief Lena Khan. But nothing about the second Trump administration is predictable or stable. In early February, following the reports of some major tensions at the DOJ, Gail Slater was pushed out. And then just one week into the Live Nation trial, the DOJ settled its portion of the case, shocking many of the industry and extracting only what many see as pretty weak concessions. Trump himself reportedly intervened in the case directly to demand that speedy settlement, which of course stirred up accusations of outright corruption. But the lawsuit isn't over yet. Because the case against Live Nation included dozens of states. A bunch of attorneys general have refused to give up the fight. So Live Nation remains in court, fighting off accusations that it operates an illegal monopoly in the ticket business, which is illegally tied to its promotions business, which is illegally tied to its venue business. But the DOJ settlement raises all sorts of complicated questions about where antitrust policy stands in the United States overall, especially with regard to ongoing cases against big tech companies like Apple and Amaz on. Lauren has been tracking all these cases and all these developments in detail, the trial, the settlement, and now the state's continuing the fight. So let's get into it. Before we start, a quick reminder that you can listen to this episode or any episode of Decoder completely ad-free by subscribing to the Verge. Just go to the verge.com slash subscribe. Okay, the verge senior policy reporter Lauren Finer on the Live Nation Anitrust Lawsuit. Here we go. Lauren Feiner, your senior policy reporter for the Verge and a resident in courtroom experiencer. Because I think what's happening in courtrooms for you right now is just a full existential experience at all times. Welcome to Dakota. Thank you. Spent a lot of time in courtrooms lately. All over the country. There there are there are other cases we can talk about at later time. The one I want to talk about with you today is the Live Nation case. The United States government is suing Live Nation, which most people know of as Ticketmaster for antitrust claims. This seemed like a winner. Like no one is happy with Ticketmaster of this case. Sort of dates back to Taylor Swift and the Aeros Tour. Like it was very hard to buy an Aeros Tour ticket, the sites crashed, everyone said well Ticketmaster is a monopoly, and we stumbled our way into an antitrust case. At a very high level, what is the Department of Justice alleging against Lib Nation slash Ticketmaster? In this case, basically there's two main things we're talking about that the government initially went after Live Nation Ticketmaster for. One thing is that they're saying this company used the fact that it owns both the promotions business where artists go to have their tours marketed and sold around the country, and their ticketing business, Ticketmaster, it used the fact that it had both of those to kind of leverage its power with venues across the country. And the second part of this is focused specifically on amphitheaters. Live Nation owns many amphitheaters around the country or it operates them. And because it controls all of those amphitheaters, it's really hard to book an amphitheater tour without going through Live Nation. Those things are ways that Live Nation Ticketmaster essentially is able to have this huge amount of power over the concert industry as we know it today, according to the complaint. So if you're an artist, you have to sign up with Live Nation in order to get access to the venues that it owns. If you're run an independent venue and you want to get an artist to come put on a show, you have to sign up to use Ticketmaster for your tickets to get access to those artists. And if you just want ticketing, you maybe have to accept ticketmasters offers of artists and rates in order to run their ticketing platform. Like they're in control of all of it. What has been the argument that that's illegal? Just that it's driving a prices, that it's a bad experience when you're trying to buy a Taylor Swift ticket. What has been the the main this is bad argument that the government has presented? Aaron Powell In the US, it's not illegal to just be a big company and have a lot of power. What is illegal is if you have a dominant share of the market and you use that power in a way that's anti-competitive, that blocks out rivals, that you know just uses bad behavior basically to break the law and make it so that there's less competition in general. So in this case, you know, some of the things that the government has been talking about that live nation ticketmaster allegedly engages in are things like having these long exclusive contracts with venues that make it hard for other players to get a foothold in those markets or trying to condition the use of one of its services on another so that it's really hard again for other rivals to try to work with those other elements of the concert industry. You were in the courtroom while the DOJ legal team was presenting its case. What did you learn from the evidence that came out of trial? Aaron Powell Right now, it's we're still in um the government's case, so we haven't heard Live Nation's full defense yet. But during those first few weeks of trial, some of what we heard was from the CEO of SeatGeek who said that basically he decided that they needed to offer retaliation insurance to venues they were pursuing as a rival to Ticketmaster to be their primary ticketing provider. Basically, they had to guarantee that if these venues lost shows because Live Nation was refusing to give them to them anymore because they were no longer ticketmaster customers, that they would be able to make them whole in some way. We kind of heard a lot about how there were these implicit or maybe not so implicit threats depending on how you perceive them that the company allegedly said to rivals or to venues that it was trying to keep under its control that it was a way that it maintained its power over this whole ecosystem. There's some like really interesting evidence presented in this case. You actually broke this story. There was some audio of a call from the CEO of Live Nation, Michael Rapino, talking to the head of the Barclay Center here in New York, and they're negotiating over whether or not their deal is is over and what might happen Is there's language in the contract that says if a certain number of games are not played that the contract extends at the same t the ticketing contract extends at the same terms for an additional year. We we don't believe that that clause has been triggered. Well it's not true. It's just not true what you're saying, Michael. But it doesn't doesn't deliver us what we need. I've told you that. I've told you we we're we got a new venue in town and the the economics have changed in the marketplace. So uh but what I told you from day one was it was you know gonna be a tough time to deliver tickets or concerts with a new competitor in town, regardless of ticketing. But anyways, John, I'm gonna go. I I I'm disappointed. I don't think you were uh ever gonna read you with us i i think you've been set to do a c tea cake deal and i thought we deserve more than this but um anywa ys i appreciate your time all right thank you michael lauren that's quite a call. We ran it on like our Instagram and people were like, this just sounds like a negotiation. But the government presented that as evidence of monopoly. What were we hearing there? Well, you heard there was the then CEO of the Barclay Center, John Abamondi, talking with the CEO of Live Nation, Michael Rapino. And basically, Abamondi was breaking the news that Barclay Center was going to go with SeatGeek over Ticketmaster as its ticketing provider after their contract ended. Now, this was 2021. The Barclay Center believed that their contract with Ticketmaster would expire that year. Michael Rapino disagreed. He felt that there was a clause in that contract triggered because of COVID that should have extended the contract. So Live Nation basically says he was he was mad that Abamondi was interpreting this contract differently and he believed that they shouldn't be able to get out of their contract this early. And that's why he got so angry there. that he took Rapino bringing up the threat of losing shows to a new competitor in town as a way of Rapino saying, Well if you don't go with Ticketmaster, then, you know, maybe we just won't sh send you these shows. And that feels like the tying, right? If you don't sign up for Ticketmaster, the artist that we represent at Live Nation won't come through Barclay Center. They'll go to another venue. Exactly. In the courtroom, do that that go over is the government intended it to? Could you tell if that was convincing? Aaron Ross Powell We actually heard Live Nation bring up this call in their opening argument, which was interesting because I think that kind of primed us to hear this F-bomb that was alluded to in Live Nation's opening. So I think when we heard it, in a way, it it hits a little bit differently because it's the F-Bomb kind of comes at a time that's not really part of this whole UBS arena discussion. It's about this anger over this clause in the contract being triggered. But at the same time, I think you do with the context from Abamonde understand how he might have interpreted this as a threat. But I could definitely see the jury interpreting it either way. I think as we've seen in those Instagram comments, some people think this is just how a business goes, and other people think this is an inherent thre at. We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back . Support for the show comes from Ship Station. If you're a fast-growing business, one of the fastest ways to lose momentum is getting bogged down in shipping. If you're constantly jumping between disconnected apps just to get orders at the door, you might want to check out ShipSationt. 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No refined sugars, no artificial sweeteners, and no refined seed oils. Head to factory meals.com/slash decoder fifty off and use decoder fifty off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Offer-only valid for new factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Fac tor. We're back with Verge Senior Policy Reporter Lauren Fe iner. The case is proceeding, the evidence is being presented, people are taking a stand, and then it settles. The DOJ settles, the states decide to keep going, but the DOJ settles. You wrote a piece about that settlement, and just a straightforward headline. The live nation settlement has industry insiders baffled. You talked to a whole bunch of people about that settlement in the industry, around the industry. Explain why the reaction was bafflement. First of all, I think when the settlement came out, it was a pretty chaotic day in court. The judge didn't know what was going on. The even trial attorneys there somewhat didn't seem to know what was going on. But the DOJ and I think it's about eight states decided to settle and the rest of you know a couple dozen or so c states are continuing on. But what was reached in that settlement, when I talked to people in the industry about it, they basically said, we don't really know who asked for this? A lot of the things that were in the settlement were things that they felt were just not that helpful or wouldn't really fundamentally change the dynamics of the industry. They did say there were a few things that did seem like they would be better than the status quo, like more transparency for artists on ticket sales, on their own ticket sales and certain caps on ticket fees. But then other things they felt like were just either so minimal that it didn't do enough or something that they didn't even really want, like, you know, access to Ticketmaster's backend for other rivals to plug into in certain cases, which we heard at trial that back end is something that's like out of the 1980s, one of the one of the witnesses testified about. And the other thing was that they have to d divest a certain number of exclusive booking contracts for amphitheaters. They're not actually divesting any amphitheaters. They're just saying that other promoters can book into them essentially. Aaron Powell There's a lot of reporting that Donald Trump personally was involved in this settlement. Ari Emmanuel, who used to be a board member at Live Nation, called Trump and personally asked him to intervene. There's reporting from the Wall Street Journal that says Trump was just walking around saying, why isn't this settled yet? How much Donald Trump is in the settlement? If you go based off of the Wall Street Journal reporting, it sounds like Trump was ushering this along and you know, we got the settlement about a week or so into trial. It sounded like there was a meeting at the White House based on the Wall Street Journal report where some of this came together. So I it sounds like there was a significant amount of involvement based on that report. It's pretty unusual to see a president involved in something like this at that level. Typically, antitrust cases are resolved whether they're brought to trial or settled based on the antitrust laws. And that's something that's done at the staff level and then at the political appointee level within the DOJ. Now, of course, like that's not something that we've heard from the DOJ or Live Nation. I think the DOJ would say this is something we came to based off of our understanding of antitrust law and the best deal that we thought we could get. That's gonna be the big question, especially as we see the judge review the settlement as part of the Tunney Act review, where he has to basically determine, is this in the public interest? Until the DOJ settled, this case felt like a a win, no matter what your politics were. Like no one likes Ticketmaster. I feel like specifically after the Aeros Tour disaster and artists starting to complain pretty widely about Ticketmaster and some venues starting to complain. The idea that antitrust enforcement was bipartisan was on the rise. Right? There were there were some conservatives who were really excited about antitrust enforcement. You have Andrew Ferguson, who's the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who makes antitrust noises all the time. He replaced Lena Khan. JD Vance was at events at events that you've covered for us where he said he actually liked Lena Khan. She was the only member of the Biden administration that he liked and thought was doing a good job because she was trying to preserve competition. What has changed? Because it feels like not going after the one that everyone hates is a big change. Yeah, it does feel like a big change. I think the tides of how antitrust enforcement works in the US have changed with this administration. I think they have still talked a lot about wanting to go after big tech and go after big corporate power, but they're much more conciliatory in certain ways in terms of their tone, in terms of their willingness to pursue settlements. You know, I think we heard a lot from Lena Kahn and Jonathan Cantor under the Biden administration that they weren't so into settling cases. They weren't really interested in that. They were interested in pushing the boundaries of how antitrust law is interpreted. And you do that through bringing cases. And that doesn't really seem to be the MO of this administration. And then we kind of have a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes where, you know, right before this case kicked off, we saw the head of the DOJ antitrust division at the time, Gail Slater, leaving that post. And it was kind of unusual how it happened. She posted on her personal ex account that she was no longer there. And this was after we heard a lot about this behind the scenes reporting about some backroom deals that went over her head in a completely separate case between HPE and Juniper. And then, you know, in this case, there's been more recent reporting showing that some of that backroom deal making might have still been going on around this case as well. Gil Seder was pretty well respected in the antitrust enforcement community. A lot of people thought that she'd actually continue to pursue the antitrust strategies that Lena Kahn and Jonathan Cantor were going after under the Biden administration. Are are you saying that she got pushed out because she didn't Aaron Powell Yeah. I mean I think based on the reporting that's out there, it it seems like there were a lot of disagreements between how Gail Slater wanted to run the antitrust division and how higher ups at the DOJ were willing to engage with lobbyists and corporate entities. And you know, after this whole separate settlement in the HPE Juniper case happened, we saw two of her top deputies fired, and one of them has since come out and basically said there there was a scandal here and that there was this backroom deal making happening and you know, that's seems to be something that's raised a lot of suspicions around this case as well and her exiting from the agency. And I should say, of course, the DOJ says that, you know, those deputies were fired because of insubordination and that they put out a a pretty nice statement about Slater after she left and they say that basically this settlement they reached with Live Nation is something that's in in the public interest. So that's how they're positioning this deal and what's gone on here. But I think there's just a lot of flags raised based on what's been happening at the agency these past few months. Who knows what actually happened here, but it it does seem like Live Nation was able to lobby their way into a settlement in a way that usually doesn't happen or or should happen. What they have not been able to do is convince the states to also drop their case. So which states remain in the case and what are they litigating? Isn't as the federal government or is it differ ent? Aaron Powell There's several states that are still involved in the case. It's um I think more than a couple dozen are still litigating this case. They've hired on a pretty high profile attorney to lead their trial. Um Jeffrey Kessler who led the NCAA antitrust case on behalf of college athletes. So they're still moving forward. And you know this is a group that's made up of both Republican and Democrat AGs. New York, California, Tennessee, Texas are some of the ones that are still on this case. There's been, you know, a handful of states that did decide to settle, but a lot of these states still see reason to push forward with a trial and try to achieve more than the DOJ did. Is that just political? You know, state AGs have to run for office. They get to say, I was the one who stopped Big Bad Ticketmaster. Is there more political upside if you're a state attorney general trying to go after a ticketmaster than if I don't know you're in the Trump administration? I certainly think that there's a significant political incentive for them there. You know, this is something that, you know, if you have an issue with tickets, your state AG's office might be the place you go to complain. So, you know, it makes a lot of sense that this would be something they hear a lot about from constituents and that they feel like is worthwhile for them to keep pursuing. And the calculation might be a little bit different than it would be for the federal government in terms of what their constituents want to see and what they'll remember to vote for them for. Aaron Powell There's a lot of history with Ticketmaster Inline. This company was formed out of mergers. Some of those mergers were approved in the Obama administration. The anti-rust lawsuit was obviously brought under the Biden deal That case, the goal was to break it up, to say we actually made a mistake in the Obama administration by allowing these companies to merge. The Biden DOJ is going to try to break these companies up and create new kinds of competition. Is that still the goal of the states? Is that something that they can achieve? If they make it all the way through trial and the jury finds in their favor, that's certainly a possibility that they end up with a breakup of this company. Now that said, I mean, uh breaking up a company, having a court order, a breakup is still kind of a long shot in any case. It's not a slam dunk by any means, but it's certainly still on the table and achieving more than what the DOJ got is certainly a possibility if again they went at trial. Let's talk about that for a second. So assuming the states stay in it, assuming that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are still as um unsympathetic to a jury as I think everyone has always assumed they would be, and the states win, what does a realistic outcome look like? What are the states hoping to and ticket master because that's kind of the source of the leverage that this company has over various parts of this industry. Again, that's gonna be uh hard to get it's not impossible, but um it's difficult to ask for a breakup. There's other things that they might try to do instead. They might order an outright sale of more of the amphitheaters or maybe put more restrictions on the kinds of contracts that Live Nation can enter with venues, or how long it can enter them. So there's definitely other levers that they can pull and perhaps they'll be in place for longer than the DOJ was able to negotiate or affect more parts of its business. So even if we don't get a breakup, there could be other things that we see happen. Aaron Powell What happens if, I don't know, Texas decides to settle in New York and California when does Ticketmaster face different regulation in different states or will there s be a national outcome? I think there would likely still be a national outcome because the case was brought under both federal antitrust laws, which the states are allowed to enforce as well. Some of the states brought them under their own statutes, which also allowed them to pursue damages in some el ements . We have to take another quick break. We'll be back in just a minute . Once upon a mundane morning, Barbs Day got busy without warning. A realtor in need of an open house sign. No, fifty of them, and designed before nine. My head hurts. Any mighty tools to help with this plight? Aha! Barb made her move. She opened Canva and got in the groove. Both creating Canva Sheets. Create 50 signs fit for suburban streets. Done in a quick, all complete. Sweet. Now imagine what your dreams can become when you put imagination to work at Canva.com . Support for this show comes from Serval AI. A functioning IT team shouldn't be wasting almost half their day on repetitive tickets. Things like password resets, access requests, and onboarding. Those tedious tasks are pulling your team away from the actual meaningful work. But with serval, you can cut 80% of your help desk tickets. 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It's flexible, developer-first, asset compliant, enterprise ready, and built for the AI era. Say goodbye to bottlenecks and legacy code. Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500, and that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build . Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursda y. We're back with Verge Senior Policy Reporter Lauren Finer. We just discussed how the states are continuing their case against Live Nation with, the hopes of achieving a breakup of Live Nation in Ticketmaster. Now I want to talk about what might happen next, and broadly about antitrust policy in this the second Trump administration, which seems to have proven that it has no interest in blocking mergers, breaking up big companies, or acting as a check on corporate power. This case feels like a pretty good test of whether the states can step up in the absence of Trump federal law enforcement. You have whatever's going on with our Department of Justice and our Federal Trade Commission and what how are they gonna operate their divisions? And then you have a bunch of states who are more active, who are pushing harder on a number of cases than maybe the federal government is. Are we seeing that dynamic equalized? Is that something that's gonna last a long time? Can they be effective in trying to fill that gap? Or is this sort of a temporary Trump blip? Aaron Powell I think this is not necessarily a new role for the state. States have always kind of served as this backstop for the federal government's antitrust enforcement. We saw the states move forward the case against the T-Mobile Sprint merger, which obviously didn't end up going in their favor, but they were the ones to usher this forward. Now they're stepping in on the Techna Next Star deal after the federal government cleared the way. It's not necessarily a new role for the states, but it's something that I think they're increasingly stepping up to do and realizing that it might fall on them more to do. Can they fully fill the shoes of the federal government? I think the issue is that they have far fewer resources than the federal government to pursue these cases. You know, even when you have 40 states on a case, they could still have far fewer resources than like the DOJ to hire experts and hire outside council. These are all really expensive things and things that take a lot of time. And when we saw the DOJ drop out of the live nation case, that was kind of a big question for the states was would they be able to hire outside trial counsel in time? Would they even be able to retain the DOJ's economic expert, which can often be a lot of money? So I think it's really tough for the states to fully fill those shoes, but we're certainly seeing a lot of them step up here and there's a lot of political c incentive for them to do so. Yeah, I feel like the political incentive to go after Ticketmaster is high. But there are other big antitrust cases that are sort of looming brought by the Biden DOJ, and I I don't know what's going to happen to them. The one that is particularly in my mind is there's an antitrust case against Apple in the App Store. Apple is not a big bad ticketmaster. Like maybe some app developers think that, and I know Meta thinks that, but I don't know that the average consumer in the average state thinks that. And I'm not sure the state AGs can hold that one up, right? There's not as much political capital to run the Apple case to trial if Tim Cook manages to negotiate his way out of it with Donald Trump personally. We're seeing these big sweeping changes at the DOJ, right? Gillslater's out, her deputies are out, this case is settling for pennies on a dollar and some concessions are on the margins. What do you think happens to cases that are pending like the Apple case? That case and the Amazon case is another federal case that's on the horizon. Those are still kind of a ways away from trial so it's a little hard to predict like what sort of world we'll even be living in by the time those get to trial. But I think we have just seen throughout these cases and throughout just messaging from the antitrust agencies that they're taking a very different approach. They're much more open to settling cases or engaging with corporate entities about how they could potentially reach a resolution outside of court than the prior administration was. So I think states are definitely aware of that dynamic and I'm sure they're considering right now what they'd have to do to keep issues that are important to them moving forward, but they're also going to have to prioritize what's most important to their own constituents. That presence of corruption in particular the the second round of the Trump administration really colors everything. Is that having more of an effect across the board on antitrust, do you think? Or is it just the sense that you can negotiate with this guy directly and maybe you'll have to put some money in the ballroom fund and that's fine? Aaron Powell I think in this administration it feels like there's definitely uh a sense that you know there's more of an opportunity to get deals done and some of that is out in the open like the antitrust officials will say like we want to talk with businesses about how we can resolve our issues. And that's not necessarily inherently a bad thing.