LIVE NATION DOJ LAWSUIT "UNLIKELY" IN '23

Live Nation executives do not anticipate a lawsuit from the Department of Justice—at least not before the end of the year. The DOJ hasn't conducted any interviews at the company, taken depositions or held substantive meetings with Live Nation’s attorneys to discuss evidence.

According to a recent Politico report that asserted a lawsuit was imminent, the DOJ “claims the entertainment giant is abusing its power over the live music industry.”

But Live Nation EVP for Corporate and Regulatory Affairs Dan Wall said in a statement: "We’re in regular contact with the DOJ, and they haven’t told us they think we’re doing anything illegal or asked us to address any concerns. It would be highly irregular for the DOJ to file without that notice and a lot of dialogue afterwards. However, if they do file we are prepared to defend ourselves."

Live Nation and Ticketmaster are both targets of an antitrust probe partially based on complaints made by some of the companies' competitors. Live Nation execs cleared to speak on background said that the company’s lawyers have been complying with discovery demands from the DOJ as it looks into antitrust allegations related to LN’s 2010 merger with Ticketmaster, at which juncture the combined entity was placed under a consent decree.

In 2019 DOJ Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim charged the company with six violations of the consent decree over a 10-year period. Live Nation agreed to pay a fine and extend the decree through 2024.

Meanwhile, Ticketmaster has been scrutinized since the 2022 crash of the presale for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) credited the incident to the company's “monopolistic” history. Ticketmaster blamed the outage on a cyber attack initiated by billions of bots.