{"id":16895,"date":"2026-03-17T02:42:37","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T02:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/newstime\/the-live-nation-trial-restarts-with-a-velvet-hammer\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T02:42:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T02:42:37","slug":"the-live-nation-trial-restarts-with-a-velvet-hammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/newstime\/the-live-nation-trial-restarts-with-a-velvet-hammer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Live Nation trial restarts with a \u2018velvet hammer\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"


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After a chaotic week following the Justice Department\u2019s mid-trial settlement<\/a> with Live Nation-Ticketmaster, the antitrust trial picked back up surprisingly smoothly on Monday \u2014 this time, with dozens of states leading the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This isn\u2019t the outcome the states originally wanted. Out of concerns about being able to effectively take over the case and fear that the jury would be prejudiced by the shakeup, they requested a mistrial, which would have restarted the court battle at an unknown future date. But an irritated Judge Arun Subramanian seemed likely to deny the request, and once the states figured out how to retain the DOJ\u2019s expert witness and were able to quickly hire up, they withdrew their mistrial motion. After the new faces were introduced, the trial restarted from roughly where it left off more than a week ago, with testimony that included how Live Nation deployed its \u201cvelvet hammer\u201d against rivals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Subramanian welcomed the jurors back from their \u201cspring break\u201d and asked if they had read or encountered any news about the case when they were out, which is forbidden by the jury instructions. They either shook their heads or remained silent. He reminded the jurors that the US had resolved its claims, as had a handful of states, but the rest were proceeding to trial<\/a>. Jurors shouldn\u2019t make any inferences from the fact those parties are no longer in the case, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With the DOJ out of the picture, the lawyers who questioned early witnesses were gone, replaced by a new team co-led by Jonathan Hatch, an attorney from the New York AG\u2019s office, and Jeffrey Kessler of Winston & Strawn, who represented college athletes in the landmark Supreme Court antitrust case against the NCAA<\/a> over compensation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The states\u2019 attorneys picked up questioning of Jay Marciano, the COO of AEG, a competitor to Live Nation on multiple fronts. While Hatch refreshed jurors on parts of Marciano\u2019s prior testimony, it was otherwise a fairly standard examination. Marciano testified about ticketing models he prefers in Europe, where multiple ticketing services often work at a venue, unlike the norm in the US where venues tend to accept exclusive ticketing contracts, often from Ticketmaster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On cross examination, Marciano spoke to an incident the jury heard about early in the trial: a call between the Barclays Center\u2019s then-CEO<\/a> and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino<\/a>, who responded to an attempt to abandon Ticketmaster by saying it would be harder for the arena to get concerts with the new UBS Arena nearby. While Barclays interpreted this as a threat to protect Ticketmaster, Marciano affirmed that it\u2019s common as a concert promoter to play venues against each other to get more favorable terms, and that the UBS Arena likely would<\/em> attract artists away from Barclays as the new venue in town.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Live Nation\u2019s president of US concerts, Robert Roux, addressed a separate allegation: that Live Nation uses its broad control over US amphitheaters to maintain its monopoly power, leaving no other real options for artists looking to play large outdoor venues. Through Live Nation\u2019s own business presentations, plaintiff attorney Josh Hafenbrack demonstrated that the company made big strides to gain power over four of the top five amphitheaters in the US by ticket sales between 2016 and now. A 2018 presentation showed a largely highlighted list of the top 100 amps worldwide, with the green highlights representing the 62 Live Nation owned, operated, or exclusively booked venues at the time. Since then, Roux confirmed, the company has added several more on that list.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Live Nation denies it acted anticompetitively, and argues the states ignore other kinds of venues that compete for the same shows. But Roux wrote in a 2015 email that many non-superstar artists come in wanting to play amphitheaters \u2014 many of which, evidence shown in court has suggested, are controlled or exclusively booked by Live Nation. He also wrote that in those cases, there was \u201croom for tighter negotiations and deals.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cEither we are together or we are competitors\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Other emails described how Live Nation thinks about its competition when contemplating otherwise lucrative deals. In a 2018 email exchange, Rapino questioned why Live Nation should give shows to a promoter in the South it considered acquiring, Red Mountain Entertainment, before it actually owned it. Roux wrote at the time that the message to Red Mountain should be, \u201cEither we are together or we are competitors.\u201d He described the approach as a \u201cvelvet hammer.\u201d On the witness stand, Roux said the message wasn\u2019t meant to \u201cantagonize\u201d the promoter, but to be firm and send a clear message. In a separate exchange that mentioned Red Mountain, Roux wrote that Live Nation shouldn\u2019t get \u201ccomplacent\u201d and \u201clet small guys encroach from the edges.\u201d Roux said the comment was a general one, and not specific to the promoter. Live Nation acquired Red Mountain<\/a> in 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2020, Rapino advised Roux against letting Radio Disney and concert promoter Superfly into a Live Nation venue, even after they offered a contract that would yield at least $400,000 in profit for Live Nation for renting out the amp. One executive had raised a concern about allowing a third-party promoter into the amp, even though the \u201cmoney is great.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finally, Roux testified that Live Nation\u2019s profits per fan have multiplied in recent years, with profitability in large amps, a key market in the case, growing more than other venue categories between 2019 and 2024. Before certain costs were factored in, the company made $386 million in profit from large amps in 2024, nearly triple the amount it made in that segment in 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Besides the delay in the case while the states\u2019 team sorted out its next moves absent the DOJ, there wasn\u2019t a noticeable change in the flow of trial and how the new litigators operated, compared to the first week of trial. The case is still expected to run several more weeks, though both sides said they\u2019ve worked to trim their witness lists to help make up for lost time. Toward the end of this week, one of the trial\u2019s most high-profile witnesses is expected to take the stand: Live Nation\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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