Senators Urge Judge To Scrutinize Live Nation-Ticketmaster Settlement

A group of senators is urging a federal judge to closely scrutinize Live Nation‘s settlement of the Justice Department‘s antitrust case, alleging that revelations “point toward a deal made in response to political
pressure rather than the public interest.”

The letter to U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian comes after a jury deliberates following a five-week trial. A group of states pressed forward with the trial, despite the Justice Department settlement.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and other senators wrote in the letter, “This settlement appears to be part of a larger pattern of
Justice Department officials reportedly overruling antitrust enforcers for political reasons.”

They cited the ouster of Gail Slater, who led the DOJ Antitrust Division, in February, just weeks before the settlement was reached. They noted the earlier ouster of Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roger Alford, and that he later warned that “‘Live Nation and Ticketmaster have paid a bevy of cozy MAGA friends to roam the halls of the [Antitrust Division] in defense of their monopoly abuses.’”

The senators wrote, “Less than a month after Ms. Slater’s ousting, the Justice Department settled the case against Live Nation. As this court is aware, the Justice Department lawyers trying the case were not involved in the settlement discussions and were not even aware of its existence prior to its filing. The state attorneys general were also kept in the dark. That the settlement was hashed out without input from the lawyers trying the case demonstrates this was not a settlement struck in response to perceived litigation risk or to protect the public from harms resulting from alleged anticompetitive behavior.”

Also signing the letter were Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT). The lawmakers also said that the settlement terms “cast doubt on whether the agreement was entered with the intention to protect the public interest from Live Nation’s monopoly.”

They called on the judge to look into the settlement under the authority of the Tunney Act, a 1974 law that establishes court reviews of such agreements to ensure that they are in the public interest.

Spokespersons for Live Nation and the DOJ did not immediately return requests for comment.

At the time of the settlement, a senior Justice Department official defended it, arguing, “It basically opens up markets for other competitors, which will allow for competition that previously didn’t exist in primary ticketing, in the live entertainment space. And what you;re going to see there is that competition is going to have a direct impact on prices coming down.”