A Manhattan federal jury found on Wednesday, April 15, that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary operated as an illegal monopoly in the concert and ticketing industry, handing the thirty-plus state attorneys general who stayed in the case after the Justice Department settled a verdict for which they had waited eight weeks of trial. [1] Jurors deliberated four days before finding for the plaintiffs and determining that Ticketmaster overcharged customers by $1.72 per ticket sold through its platform between May 2020 and 2024. Judge Arun Subramanian will now schedule a second trial to determine remedies, which could include monetary penalties in the hundreds of millions of dollars, injunctions against specific business practices, or a court-ordered breakup of the company. Live Nation said it would appeal any unfavorable ruling. [2]

The verdict arrives into an American entertainment industry where touring has been the artist's primary source of income for more than a decade, and where the artist's primary source has been routed, for most of that decade, through a company the jury has now found to be a monopolist. Rolling Stone reported in the week leading up to the verdict that the average concert ticket in the United States is now $132 — up 38 percent from $95.30 in 2019. [3] Live Nation owns, operates, or has an equity interest in hundreds of amphitheaters. Ticketmaster controls 86 percent of primary ticketing at major concert venues and, according to the states' lead attorney Jeffrey Kessler, 78 percent of the large amphitheaters artists use. [1] The DOJ's original complaint, filed in 2024 under the Biden administration, sought a breakup. The Trump administration's DOJ settled the federal claims days into the March trial for a $280 million settlement fund, a 15 percent cap on service fees at certain amphitheaters, and divestiture of exclusive booking agreements at thirteen amphitheaters — a settlement the states called inadequate.

What the verdict does not do, immediately, is lower ticket prices. CNN's legal analyst Scott Grzenczyk called it "an earthquake in the industry in terms of people's perception in feeling validated" while cautioning that "the courts won't order injunctive relief to make tickets $3 less expensive per ticket." [4] Judge Subramanian instructed lawyers for both sides to meet "and the United States" to provide a joint submission on next-phase proceedings. NPR's post-verdict coverage quoted Notre Dame law professor Roger Alford calling the outcome "a massive win for the state AGs and an historic miss for the DOJ. The DOJ had the talent, the material, and the audience. It just lacked leadership with the courage to step on stage." [5]

The verdict is the second data point on what the paper has been tracking as an embryonic thread on touring economics. The first was the April 18 feature on Coachella's Weekend One cancellations and pullouts. The third is running today — Meghan Trainor cancelled her Get In Girl tour on April 16, two days after the verdict, citing her new child and album preparation; Rezz pulled Coachella for health; Anyma's Weekend One set was cancelled by wind; Lambrini Girls pulled for brain injury. Four mechanisms at the artist-body level, one week, while a jury decided the company that books most of these acts was a monopolist. The pattern is not a single accusation. It is a system whose operating model has been validated in court as extractive and whose artists are, simultaneously, failing to make the tours work.

Live Nation's defense lawyer David Marriott argued in closing that "success is not against the antitrust laws in the United States." The jury did not disagree; it found specifically that Live Nation exercised monopoly power through identifiable practices, including tying ticketing services to booking, exclusive dealings with amphitheaters, and what a Live Nation employee memorably described in an internal message read into evidence as "robbing them blind, baby." [1] The messages were ultimately read as evidence of culture more than practice, which was the states' point. The remedies phase will hinge on whether Judge Subramanian finds the culture has produced structurally illegal practices that require structural remedies.

What comes next, in the narrow sense, is a schedule. The judge sets a date. Both sides file damages briefs. The state AGs, per California AG Rob Bonta's post-verdict statement, will pursue a breakup. [2] What comes next in the broader sense is a first run of the 2026 concert season — the summer amphitheater circuit, the arena tours, the festival runs including Coachella's current weekend — that will happen under an unresolved verdict. Artists and fans enter that summer with one certainty they did not have before: the jury found the house was stacked. The remedies phase will answer whether the law can unstack it without the cooperation of a federal government that chose to settle the same case for less.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles