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In recent years, Live Nation has faced bipartisan condemnation for controlling ticketing markets and adding junk fees to the cost of concerts and other live events.
The vast majority of Americans who pay no attention to the social event of the year in Washington, last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, probably also don’t know that a weeklong series of parties have sprung up around that event, bringing together traditional media, policymakers, lobbyists, and other facets of the Capitol blob. D.C. tipsheet Axios, for example, hosted not one but two events during Correspondents’ Dinner week.
Axios’s partner was Live Nation, the ticketing and entertainment giant that is currently under investigation at the Justice Department for antitrust violations. Axios held a co-branded event at the OAS Building last Thursday, and a second one at the National Building Museum last Friday, where Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino was listed as a co-host, along with Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz. Jelly Roll played a set at the Thursday night event; Live Nation produces his tours.
A photo of the cocktail napkins at one of the events, obtained by the Prospect, shows that the lobbying even extended to the party’s accessories: “Fans paid an average of $38 for an entry-level US concert ticket in 2023,” the napkin reads. The napkin does not say whether these were Live Nation concerts exclusively.
Axios hasn’t responded to the Prospect’s questions about the events. (UPDATE: Other napkins contained various defenses of Live Nation as well.)
Live Nation’s dalliance with insider media culture is just one of the ways the company is building up its Washington defenses, not only as the risk of a monopolization lawsuit looms, but as Congress debates bipartisan bills aimed at ticketing reform. Live Nation spent $4.7 million in federal lobbying just between 2021 and 2023, and its total number of lobbyists went from just four in 2016 to 37 last year, according to federal disclosures.
The menagerie of Live Nation lobbyists includes two former members of Congress and the ex-chief of staff to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who has been a vociferous critic of Live Nation and has her own bill aimed at the ticketing market.
Live Nation is also a force in campaign contributions, with $168,750 donated thus far in the 2024 cycle by individuals associated with the company, and nearly $73,000 in direct corporate PAC contributions since 2021. And it is an active member of “reform” coalitions that focus on everything wrong with ticketing except Live Nation’s own monopoly power.
It’s unclear whether this blitz will save Live Nation from legal or legislative risk. But it follows a familiar playbook that Big Tech platforms used two years ago to successfully defeat bipartisan measures to encroach on their power. And while Big Tech may have more money and influence, at least Live Nation can get Jelly Roll.
AFTER LIVE NATION AND TICKETMASTER MERGED IN 2010, the company’s imprint in Washington drifted. As recently as 2018, it spent a paltry $240,000 on federal lobbying, according to Open Secrets.
But in recent years, Live Nation has faced bipartisan condemnation for controlling ticketing markets and adding junk fees to the cost of concerts and other live events. Live Nation has allegedly forced venues to use its ticketing services to book major acts. It also manages and promotes thousands of artists and has ramped up its purchasing of venues; it now operates 64 percent of the top amphitheaters in the country, according to the American Economic Liberties Project, or AELP. (Axios itself recently reported on Live Nation buying up most of the music venues in Des Moines, Iowa.)
The meltdown in ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour raised attention to Live Nation in Washington. The company’s extraction of more profits, however, has continued undaunted, partly because it can steer its stable of artists to its owned-and-operated venues, and deny rivals access. A recently released legal filing from 2019 alleges that Live Nation made secret side deals with vendors to raise the cost of putting on concerts, receiving rebates from those vendors while artists, managers, and co-promoters paid more. “Different people want to break up Live Nation for different reasons,” Kevin Erickson of the Future of Music Coalition told the Prospect.
Live Nation’s practices have been under Justice Department investigation for months. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier in April that a lawsuit would be filed “in the coming weeks,” related to some or all of these allegations. The Prospect has been told that as many as three cases could be brought, but that the filing is likely weeks away.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has also subpoenaed documents from Live Nation as part of an ongoing investigation.
Live Nation has denied these charges. In a blog post in March, Dan Wall, the company’s antitrust attorney and head of corporate affairs, argued that Ticketmaster and Live Nation promoters play no role in pricing live events, and that add-on fees set by venues only reflect minimal charges for ticketing services. (He didn’t mention who owns the venues, or the dynamic of keeping artists, promoters, venues, and ticketing within the Live Nation ecosystem.)
Wall’s blog post likely mirrors the arguments Live Nation is making in Washington behind the scenes. In 2022, lobbying expenses for Live Nation rose to $1.1 million. Last year, they more than doubled, to $2.38 million.
Of the 37 lobbyists at six different outside lobbying firms working for Live Nation over the past year, 25 were former congressional staffers. Another two were previously members of Congress: Ed Whitfield (R-KY), who spent 21 years in the House before resigning in 2016 and joining Farragut Partners, and Mark Pryor (D-AR), a two-term senator from Arkansas who now lobbies with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
Jonathan Becker, who served as chief of staff to Sen. Klobuchar from 2010 to 2013, was paid $120,000 to lobby for Live Nation in 2023. Sen. Klobuchar’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Klobuchar has been one of the most outspoken politicians about Live Nation, chairing a hearing in 2023 in the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee and condemning the company as “one big triple monopoly” in an AELP online event in January. But Klobuchar’s bipartisan bill with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Fans First Act, is actually supported by Live Nation.
THE FANS FIRST BILL WOULD REQUIRE UP-FRONT DISCLOSURES of the full ticket price, something Live Nation says its Ticketmaster service does already. It would also mandate full refunds for canceled events and create large civil penalties for violations. But much of Fans First aligns with Live Nation’s theory that resellers, not primary markets, cause all the problems in ticketing.
Under Fans First, consumers would be told whether a ticket is being offered by a primary or secondary seller. Speculative selling, where a reseller offers tickets it doesn’t yet have, would be banned, though “concierge” selling that allows fans to pay a broker to get them a ticket would still be allowed. And the BOTS Act, a 2016 law barring the use of computers to game online sales and snatch as many tickets as possible for resellers, would be strengthened.
A large coalition called Fix the Tix has endorsed Fans First; a letter from the group signed by 300 musicians was sent last week. That coalition shares most of Live Nation’s goals in targeting ticketing reforms toward secondary markets. In fact, the initial release of Fix the Tix’s manifesto last year bore a precise resemblance to a Live Nation–led effort called FAIR Ticketing, which released a model bill last February. TicketNews called the Fix the Tix approach “largely a retread of Live Nation’s wishlist.”
Fans First’s ban on speculative selling, expansion of the BOTS Act, and mandate for all-in pricing were all part of the FAIR Ticketing recommendations. Live Nation is actually a ticket reseller too, earning $4.5 billion from the resale market in 2022. But deflecting focus away from itself and onto other companies like StubHub, a company that resells tickets, is clearly a goal.
StubHub has criticized the FAIR Ticketing effort, noting that it neglects “any mention of Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s behavior.” (StubHub and other resellers have built their own “grassroots” coalitions, like Fan Freedom and the Sports Fans Coalition.) Ticketmaster has also been accused of restraining secondary markets by holding back tickets until hours before a show so they cannot be resold.
Lobbying disclosures show that Live Nation has engaged in lobbying on other bills, like the TICKET Act, a more modest version that covers all-in pricing and speculative tickets and has passed committees in the House and Senate, as well as the BOSS and Swift Act, which is more comprehensive on transparency in all ticket pricing. (The bill Live Nation has lobbied on the most is the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, which suggests it either wants to insert something into or get something pulled out of that must-pass legislation, which will likely advance before a deadline next week.)
Unfortunately for Live Nation, adding its endorsement to Fans First has if anything slowed down the bill in Congress. Despite the increased lobbying profile, Live Nation’s reputation remains sullied by the Eras Tour debacle and the actually existing cost of tickets.
Live Nation did not respond to a request for comment.
Many artist and consumer groups see Fans First as a step forward, despite Live Nation’s support. But some critics argue that Live Nation has already won by shifting the legislative direction to the contestable terrain of ticketing, and away from the full spectrum of the company’s anti-competitive practices. “Everyone is jumping on the Taylor Swift breakdown and not what people have been talking about for a decade,” said Krista Brown of AELP.
For example, another Klobuchar bill, the Unlock Ticketing Markets Act, which would prevent exclusive contracts between ticketing services and venues, has gotten little traction, while Live Nation–approved bills attacking secondary markets have been moving through Congress.
That said, a DOJ antitrust investigation would confront the structural issues of monopoly power, as Klobuchar noted. “Taking on the issues in ticketing markets is larger than just one bill,” she explained to TicketNews last year.
That’s another reason for Live Nation building a Washington beachhead. Antitrust trials take time, and building sentiment among lawmakers and the press reports they rely upon can make a difference. So Jelly Roll singing to revelers, while seemingly trivial, can lead to numerous letters in support of Live Nation, media reports downplaying its monopoly, and obfuscation of the real issues at play. In addition to a foot-stomping good time.
