{"id":514243,"date":"2026-03-10T03:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T03:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/514243\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T03:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T03:41:08","slug":"live-nation-settlement-shows-disrespect-for-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/514243\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Nation Settlement Shows ‘Disrespect for Fans’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAmy Klobuchar<\/a> called out the Department of Justice\u2019s settlement with Live Nation<\/a>, saying it will do \u201clittle to lower costs, preserve venues, or protect fans\u201d in a new interview with Rolling Stone. <\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking hours after the surprise deal was announced, the Minnesota senator expressed her frustration with both the terms of the deal and how it was reached. Specifically, she cited the unexpected ouster of the DOJ\u2019s antitrust head, Gail Slater \u2014 who appeared eager to pursue the Live Nation<\/a> case \u2014 one month before the trial began<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery single sign points to a backroom deal,\u201d Klobuchar says, \u201cmade without the knowledge of antitrust lawyers, and made against the wishes of people that were trying to do the right thing and then were forced to leave. And certainly made against the wishes of fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLive Nation has spent much of the last year heavily lobbying the Trump administration over the suit. Most prominently, the company appointed Ric Grenell<\/a> \u2014 the longtime Trump crony and current Kennedy Center president<\/a> \u2014 to its board of directors last May. A recent report in The American Prospect<\/a> also indicated that Live Nation\u2019s lobbying team included former Trump aide and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and MAGA influencer\/laywer Mike Davis (who also reportedly helped lobby<\/a> the DOJ to drop its challenge to the $14 billion merger involving Hewlett Packard and Juniper Networks).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis case was one of the biggest monopolies the world has ever known,\u201d Klobuchar says, \u201cthat has 80 percent of the primary ticketing market for major concert venues, 40 to 50 top amphitheaters, 60 percent of promotion revenue at major concert venues, and a hugely high percentage of major sporting events \u2014 when you think about that monopoly, and you think about what this administration has been doing, [the settlement] wasn\u2019t a surprise.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, the deal still did catch some off guard, including the trial\u2019s own judge Judge Arun Subramanian, who was shocked to learn that while an agreement was reached last week, the court wasn\u2019t alerted until Monday. \u201cI agree with the judge who said it showed absolute disrespect for the court and the jury,\u201d Klobuchar says. \u201cI would add one more thing: it shows absolute disrespect for the fans and for people that go to concerts.\u201d (A representative for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

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\n\tKlobuchar says the settlement does contain \u201csome good things,\u201d like the four-year cap on Ticketmaster<\/a>\u2019s exclusivity contracts with venues (something she\u2019s tried to address in federal legislation). But she remained firm that anything short of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster wasn\u2019t enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery time a Justice Department or an administration has done something like this, they have gotten around it and grown even bigger,\u201d Klobuchar says. \u201cThe only way to see a future for competition in ticketing, venues, and promotion would be breaking them up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe senator also dismissed concerns that, had the DOJ forced Live Nation to divest from Ticketmaster, the company would\u2019ve been scooped up by some private equity firm that would\u2019ve made the company worse. \u201cThose arguments were made in a lot of company breakups, and it just wasn\u2019t the case,\u201d she says. She referenced the breakup of Bell System and AT&T in the early Eighties, calling it \u201cvery successful for everyone in terms of bringing costs down and creating innovations in phone service.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for what\u2019s next, Klobuchar highlighted that Congress can continue to provide oversight, quipping, \u201cAnd if you think oversight doesn\u2019t matter, it certainly did in the Kristi Noem hearing<\/a> last week.\u201d (Noem was fired<\/a> from the Department of Homeland Security a few days later.) Klobuchar plans to introduce new legislation that could help bolster disclosure requirements about the circumstances surrounding settlements, and give states more power to intervene, review, and continue cases the DOJ voluntarily dismisses. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tKlobuchar is also supportive of the many individual state attorneys general who plan to keep up the fight. So far, just seven of the nearly 40 states (plus Washington D.C.) who signed onto the DOJ\u2019s suit, have agreed to settle, while some AGs \u2014 such as New York\u2019s Letitia James \u2014 have indicated their intention to keep pursuing cases against Live Nation. Several states also filed a motion to declare a mistrial, noting they were \u201cunaware of any substantive settlement discussions\u201d until after the jury was picked and the case began.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI hope to see aggressive litigation from the states,\u201d Klobuchar says. \u201cThey\u2019ve had to lead the way in so many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amy Klobuchar called out the Department of Justice\u2019s settlement with Live Nation, saying it will do \u201clittle to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[8632,28,9827,101271],"class_list":["post-514243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-amy-klobuchar","tag-business","tag-live-nation","tag-ticketmaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}