Anti-Trust Case Against Live Nation Could Impact Milwaukee

Site of future concert venue at Deer District. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

It was nearly a year ago, in May of 2024, that the U.S. Department of Justice filed an anti-trust action against Live Nation-Ticketmaster “for Monopolizing Markets Across the Live Concert Industry,” as a press release by the DOJ announced.

Live Nation, already a powerful concert promoter in the U.S., purchased Ticketmaster in 2010, creating a formidable pairing that has created a “unlawful monopoly,” the DOJ case claimed. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services,” said then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. “It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”

That may now seem like ancient history, with President Donald Trump appointing a new attorney general, firing employees and seemingly turning the DOJ upside down. But last month we learned that this is one suit the Trump administration intends to continue pursuing. DOJ prosecutors responded to an action by Live Nation-Ticketmaster to dismiss the suit, and a federal judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence for the case to move forward.

As a New Republic story called “Everybody Hates Ticketmaster” noted, this may be the one issue that Democrats and Republicans agree on. The DOJ suit “was joined by attorneys generals for 29 states and the District of Columbia, including (predictably) California and New York but also Texas, West Virginia, Tennessee, and South Carolina—all states where Republicans control the governorship and the state legislature,” Timothy Noah reported. “In the matter of outrageous fees charged at concert venues, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America. There’s the United States of America.”

Wisconsin, through Attorney General Josh Kaul, was among the 29 states joining the suit.

The 2022 controversy involving the hugely popular Taylor Swift “Eras Tour,” where the Ticketmaster system functioned so badly the company canceled the general sale for the public, led to a U.S. Senate hearing where Democrats and Republicans were “absolutely unified” about “fixing what’s wrong at Live Nation,” as The Wrap reported.

“Live Nation, which pulls in $22 billion in annual revenue, is a cartoon monopoly,” Noah writes. “It ‘controls around 60 percent of concert promotions at major concert venues across the country,’ according to the DOJ complaint… Ticketmaster controls ticketing at about 80 percent of these same concert venues…One arm of Live Nation controls supply (the talent), while another manipulates demand (the audience).”

Ticketmaster uses its monopoly power to attach all kinds of fees to the tickets it sells, the DOJ complaint notes, including service fees, VIP fees, Platinum fees, Pricemaster fees, per-order fees, payment processing fees, and facility fees. In a 2022 segment about Live Nation, HBO’s John Oliver said his researchers found a 2019 ticket to a concert by Kidz Bop, a children’s pop music group, where the fees added 75% to the ticket price, a 2022 concert by the rapper Tyler, the Creator where the fees added 78%, and a 2019 Monster Jam truck rally where the fees hiked the ticket price by 100%.

But it’s the company’s control of the scalpers market that is the most destructive and least understood part of the problem, says Pabst Theater Group executive director Gary Witt. “They have in essence become the largest scalper in America,” he tells Urban Milwaukee. “They host all the secondary sellers on Ticketmaster.”

For a hot concert, ticket buyers will resell tickets to Ticketmaster, which will buy them back and resell them, each time taking a fee for each transaction. “For the Taylor Swift tour, they kept reselling and reselling and reselling tickets, getting a fee each time, as the tickets kept rising higher,” an industry professional tells Urban Milwaukee.

The Pabst Theater group, which books shows at five venues, the Pabst and Riverside theaters, Turner Hall, Vivarium and the Miller High Life Theatre, may be most affected by Live Nation, as the latter holds a majority interest in Frank Productions in Madison, which competes with the Pabst to book shows in the area. Frank Productions is also working to build a concert venue in Deer District, which would compete with and likely take shows from The Rave and Eagles Club. And Frank Productions also has an exclusive deal to book concerts at Summerfest’s American Family Amphitheatre and BMO Pavilion.

All of this could be impacted if Live Nation is found guilty of monopoly practices and has to separate from Ticketmaster. The revenue from Ticketmaster has allowed Live Nation to out-bid independent promoters and venues for concert tours.

Should Live Nation be found guilty, the big winners in Milwaukee would be The Rave and Eagles Club and the Pabst Theater Group. Another possible winner would be Potawatomi Casino, which has been talking about opening a concert venue that could compete with the proposed venue in Deer District by Frank Productions. The big losers in Milwaukee would be Frank Productions and Summerfest: as Live Nation loses much of its revenue, that could affect everything Frank Productions does in Milwaukee (and in Madison).

Two industry sources told Urban Milwaukee that the Pabst had been served with a subpoena by DOJ investigators working on the case against Live Nation, and will be searching through the Pabst’s financial records to help prove the DOJ case.

Witt, however, denies this. “I can tell you I haven’t been served,” he says. “But I know of others in our industry that have been served,” he added, noting that they were in other cities.

It’s possible that The Rave and Eagles Club (which did not respond to a request for comment) will be served as it has had a number of encounters with Frank Productions, as Urban Milwaukee has previously reported.

It remains to be seen if the DOJ lawyers can win their case. But one thing is clear: the leaders of both political parties in America will be rooting them on.