Music fans, we’ve got some bad news. The Trump Justice Department settled its case against Live Nation, so buying concert tickets will continue to suck for the foreseeable future. “It’s time for Ticketmaster war.” “There was another Ticketmaster great war.” “Why is it the Ticketmaster war?” You see, in 2024, the Justice Department sued Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, to force them to sell Ticketmaster, America’s largest ticketing company. The lawsuit argued that the company was using its ginormous market power to put the squeeze on performers, venues and you. “Ticketmaster, count your [expletive] days.” “So over this.” And by the way, everyone knew that this is exactly what was going to happen when the government allowed these companies to merge. Bruce Springsteen knew it. “Bruce Springsteen says Ticketmaster abused his fans. And I agree with the Boss.” The government knew it. “The combination has the potential to create one company with a stranglehold on all segments of the concert business.” And, of course, the companies knew it, too. That was the reason that the deal was made. The C.E.O. of Live Nation said the company was building a one-stop platform for the live music business, insisting that customers would reap the benefits. And the Obama administration let the deal go through. The government did impose some conditions on the merger. It made Live Nation promise not to abuse its market power. But the reason that the nation’s largest concert promoter bought the nation’s largest ticketing company was precisely to have a monopoly that it could take advantage of. And that is exactly what Live Nation did. So in 2019, the government brought the hammer down and made the company double pinky promise to follow the rules this time. The government also required Live Nation to hire a monitor, basically a babysitter, who, in theory, was supposed to sit there and make sure that the company wasn’t committing more crimes. That monitor hung around for five years as Live Nation, you guessed it, continued to flout the rules, “Holy [expletive],” exerting its power and tormenting fans, “Violated a merger settlement.” —— because monopolies don’t just lead to higher prices, they can also lead to a decline in service. “The website fully crashed.” “And then Ticketmaster crashed.” “I didn’t get tickets.” “Ticketmaster, you can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.” This decline in service is often called enshittification. Live Nation, meanwhile, maintains it’s always played by the rules. “We’re a 2 percent margin business, so we must be the dumbest monopoly alive.” Finally, the D.O.J. decided enough is enough. “It is time to break it up.” The way that Live Nation was doing business did not change in 2024. What changed was that the Biden administration had decided to revive antitrust enforcement. A new generation of academics had been arguing that companies were gaining too much power, and that they were abusing that market power, and President Biden had decided to hire some of them to run antitrust enforcement and to revive it. And this wasn’t just popular on the left. A lot of conservatives were also concerned about the concentration of market power, particularly in the tech industry. “And I think you’re going to see tough antitrust action taking place.” And when Donald Trump started his second term as president, he embraced those concerns. He hired some of the people who had been arguing most loudly for a stronger enforcement of antitrust from a conservative perspective. “Who’s got an incredible reputation. She’ll do very, very well.” But more than a year later, that revolution is over. The people that Trump hired to enforce antitrust have now left the administration. It has settled or dropped some of the big cases that it inherited from the Biden administration. And it has shown very little interest in pursuing new antitrust cases. So, what happened? The lobbyists showed up. Corporations sent people to Washington to argue on their behalf that these laws should not be rigorously enforced and that companies should be allowed to merge and exercise market power. The right way to think about this is there was basically a civil war in the Trump administration between this group of people who really wanted to enforce antitrust laws and another group that had always been skeptical of these laws. And when the lobbyists started arguing on behalf of these corporate interests, they found a receptive audience for those views. And that brings us to today. “Successfully allowing the concert giant to avoid a breakup with Ticketmaster.” The case against them hasn’t gone away completely. A coalition of more than 30 states are still fighting it out in court. The big picture here is that the Trump administration is not looking out for your interests. The Live Nation case signals very clearly that the administration is siding with corporations, siding with their ability to exercise market power, to raise prices, to deliver a lower quality of service, to make the concert-going experience less fun for you and more expensive for you, and that they’re going to do that not just in the concert-going sphere, but in other areas of your life, too.
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