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Southern District Of New York Grants In Part Summary Judgment In Government’s Monopolization Suit Against Live Entertainment Company
03/11/2026On March 2, 2026, Judge Arun Subramanian of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York commenced jury selection in a monopolization suit brought by the Department of Justice and 39 states against a live entertainment company and its ticketing subsidiary, after declining to dispose of the case at summary judgment. United States v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., Case No. 24-cv-3973 (AS) (S.D.N.Y.). In his February 18, 2026, order granting in part and denying in part defendants’ summary judgment motion, Judge Subramanian permitted three sets of claims to proceed to trial: (1) tying claims related to the market for large amphitheaters; (2) claims that defendants monopolized the venue-facing ticketing market; and (3) independent state law claims distinct from the federal monopolization claims.
Defendants are corporate entities comprising a vertically integrated live entertainment company that owns and operates venues, provides promotion services to artists, and sells tickets directly to fans. The company produces approximately 54,000 events per year globally and owns, operates, or has booking rights at 394 venues worldwide.
Plaintiffs alleged six relevant antitrust markets pertaining to live events at “major concert venues” (MCVs): promotion services for events at MCVs sold to artists; slots at MCVs sold to artists; concert-booking services sold to MCVs; markets for primary ticketing services sold to MCVs for concerts, and those sold to MCVs for any event; and primary ticketing services for events at MCVs sold to fans. Defendants argued that plaintiffs lacked evidence to show anticompetitive effects in any of these markets and further opposed plaintiffs’ market definitions as “gerrymandering” for excluding stadiums, smaller amphitheaters, and large theaters.
Antitrust litigation often turns on how relevant markets are defined. For this reason, the opinion analyzes the plaintiffs’ alleged markets in substantial detail.
The Court rejected plaintiffs’ alleged market for promotion services for events at MCVs sold to artists and dismissed the related claims. The Court was unpersuaded that quantitative evidence presented by plaintiffs’ expert under the hypothetical monopolist test demonstrated a specific market, concluding instead that the expert’s methodology of analyzing “where artists performed following an appearance at a major concert venue” bore “little resemblance” to a reasonable measure of economic substitution. The Court explained that the venue an artist selects for a given performance “may simply depend on what types of venues are on offer in each locale” and does not reflect substitution in response to defendants’ alleged anticompetitive terms.
The Court also rejected plaintiffs’ alleged market for primary ticketing at MCVs sold to fans. First, it held that ticketers compete for exclusive contracts with venues for each event, and therefore fans do not participate in the market where plaintiffs allege they are being harmed. While the Court acknowledged that ticketers may be sensitive to fans’ preferences, that “conclusion is equally consistent with the explanation that venues want to hire ticketers that fans enjoy using[.]” As a practical matter, the Court also reasoned that this market was improperly limited to MCVs because fans “typically buy tickets for concerts of artists that they want to see instead of venues that they want to attend.”
In turning to plaintiffs’ alleged anticompetitive conduct, the Court granted summary judgment for defendants on claims related to the market for concert-booking services sold to venues. In monopolization cases, in addition to showing that defendants have monopoly power in a relevant market, plaintiffs must also show that they achieved or maintained their monopoly position through anticompetitive conduct. Here, plaintiffs pointed to two theories: first, that defendants’ acquisitions of other promoters constituted anticompetitive conduct in and of itself, and second, that defendants’ ancillary fee increases from 2017 to 2024 amounted to evidence of anticompetitive effects. The Court was unconvinced. The Court found that the growth by acquisition plaintiffs alleged did not by itself evidence competitive harm, and that it was “wholly unclear what the harm here is supposed to be.” Similarly, the Court concluded that fee increases alone did not demonstrate defendants’ prices were above the competitive level.
Conversely, in the artist-facing market for event slots at MCVs, the Court credited plaintiffs’ theory that defendants’ conduct may constitute unlawful tying of the use of its owned-amphitheaters to its promotion services. And, in the markets for primary ticketing services sold to MCVs for concerts and those sold to MCVs for any event, the Court found evidence of foreclosure, raising rivals’ costs, and barriers to entry sufficient to create triable issues of fact. Specifically, the Court pointed to evidence that defendants’ practice of exclusive contracting may be coercive with respect to the foreclosure theory. On plaintiffs’ “raising rivals” costs’ theory, the Court cited evidence that defendants’ retaliatory threats against venues created an implicit cost for competing primary ticketers.
Finally, the Court rejected defendants’ argument that state plaintiffs lack antitrust standing to seek damages on behalf of consumers. Defendants argued that consumers—fans who purchase tickets on Ticketmaster—do not participate in the market for primary-ticket services (where venues are the customers to whom defendants sell service) and therefore do not suffer a cognizable injury. The Court, however, held that fans, as downstream purchasers who directly interact with defendants to buy tickets, are “within that area of the economy endangered by that breakdown of competitive conditions” and thus may have suffered antitrust injury.
