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Music|Live Nation Accused of Hurting Music Fans as Antitrust Trial Begins
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/arts/music/live-nation-antitrust-trial.html
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The Justice Department lawsuit says the concert giant acts as a monopoly in the music industry, a charge the company denies.
March 3, 2026
The Justice Department on Tuesday accused Live Nation, the giant concert company that owns Ticketmaster, of deploying a far-reaching monopoly to stifle competition, dominate the ticketing market and extract money from fans through high ticket prices and surcharges.
“We are here because they misuse their market power,” David E. Dahlquist, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in an opening statement at the government’s long-awaited antitrust trial at Federal District Court in Manhattan. “They earn their profits through illegal action,” he added.
The government says Live Nation retains its grip on the music industry with strong-arm tactics like demanding that artists use its promotion services in order to perform in its amphitheaters. Major venues, the government says, are pressured into signing deals with Ticketmaster by the prospect of losing out on its popular tours the company controls.
As a remedy, the government is looking to break up the company — basically undoing the 2010 merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster that it once approved and that it now blames for creating a colossus with no equal in the live entertainment world.
“This case is about power,” Mr. Dahlquist said, “the power of a monopolist to control competition.”
Live Nation argued to the jury that all of that is false.
Even though it is by far the biggest power in live music, David R. Marriott, a lawyer for Live Nation, said, the company is no monopoly. Instead, he argued, it has minimal profit margins, fights for every deal in a hypercompetitive business and does not make threats. The customers at the heart of the government’s case, he argued, are powerful and sophisticated counterparties: superstar artists and large venues owned by powerful entertainment companies.
