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A federal appeals court says Live Nation and Ticketmaster must face a class action claiming they charged “extraordinarily high” prices to thousands of ticket buyers, ruling that the concert giants cannot enforce “opaque and unfair” user agreements to scuttle the lawsuit.
Live Nation claimed fans had waived their right to sue in court when they bought their tickets, arguing they had signed agreements promising to litigate any legal disputes via private arbitration — a common requirement when purchasing event tickets and other services from many companies.
But in a ruling Monday (Oct. 28), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Live Nation’s agreements were “unconscionable and unenforceable” since they would make it “impossible” for fans to fairly pursue claims against the company.
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“Forced to accept terms that can be changed without notice, a plaintiff then must arbitrate under … opaque and unfair rules,” the appeals court wrote. “The rules and the terms are so overly harsh or one-sided as to unequivocally represent a systematic effort to impose arbitration as an inferior forum.”
The ruling described Live Nation’s agreements in scathing terms, calling them “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory to be borderline unintelligible” and “poorly drafted and riddled with typos.” The terms were so confusing, the court said, that Live Nation’s own attorneys “struggled to explain the rules” during a court hearing.
A spokesperson for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday (Oct. 31).
The ruling came as Live Nation is facing a sweeping antitrust lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice, seeking to break up the company over allegations that it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry. That separate action, which could take years to resolve, remains pending.
The class action against Live Nation, filed in 2022, accuses the company of violating antitrust laws by monopolizing the market for concert tickets and engaging in “predatory” behavior. Filed on behalf of “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of ticket buyers, the case claims Live Nation and Ticketmaster abused their dominance to charge “extraordinarily high” prices to consumers.
The lawsuit was something of a sequel to an earlier class action, in which the same legal team (from the law firm Quinn Emanuel) made highly-similar claims against Live Nation. That earlier case was dismissed after a federal judge ruled that such accusations must be handled via private litigation because of agreements that the plaintiffs had signed when they purchased their tickets.
In Monday’s ruling, the Ninth Circuit said that earlier victory had been both a gift and a curse for Live Nation. Though it had allowed the company to avoid a class-action lawsuit, the ruling raised the troubling prospect of facing thousands of individual arbitration cases all at once.
“Defendants foresaw that if their motion to compel [arbitration] in that case were granted, they would be faced with a large number of parallel individual claims by ticket purchasers,” the appeals court wrote. “In anticipation of such claims, defendants sought to gain in arbitration some of the advantages of class-wide litigation while suffering few of its disadvantages.”
According to the ruling, doing so involved amending its terms of use to require fans to submit to “novel and unusual” procedures for “mass arbitration” offered by a new arbitration company called New Era ADR.
It was this new arbitration agreement that the appeals court declared unenforceable in Monday’s ruling. The court roundly criticized the rules, saying they had placed unfair terms on any consumers who wanted to litigate a dispute with Live Nation. And, citing the company’s market share, the court said fans had almost no choice but to sign the agreement.
“Because Ticketmaster is the exclusive ticket seller for almost all live concerts in large venues, prospective ticket buyers in most instances are faced with a choice,” the court wrote. “They can either use Ticketmaster’s website and accept its terms, or refuse to use the website and be entirely foreclosed from purchasing tickets on the primary market.”
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The festival organized by Lil Wayne is getting a new platform for creators with Live Nation Urban in time for this year’s edition, entitled “LilWeezyCon”.
In a press release, Live Nation Urban announced that they’ve agreed to a partnership to provide a new space for creators and innovators working with the community at the annual Lil’ WeezyAna Fest organized by Lil Wayen, known as LilWeezyCon. The partnership is with the Cultural Creators Foundation, and the event will take place during the concert event weekend in Lil Wayne’s hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana.
LilWeezyCon will be an all-day event this coming Saturday (November 2) at the Fillmore New Orleans from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. The schedule includes an array of panel discussions, networking sessions, and workshops crafted to spark inspiration in attendees. Attendance at LilWeezyCon is free, with college students getting VIP access. Volunteers from LSU, Xavier University, and other local schools such as Dillard University will assist in putting on the events. Guest speakers include Head of Music Industry Cultural Collaborations at Amazon Music Phylicia Fant, Head of HipHop/R&B Rotation at Amazon Music Sierra Lever, Terriona “Tank” Bell of Tank & Tha Bangas, and other notable industry figures and artists.
“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Live Nation Urban to create Lil’ WeezyCon, where we can bring together the brightest minds and most influential voices from across the industry to inspire and uplift future generations,” said Joi Brown, Founder and CEO of Culture Creators Foundation in the press release. “This is an incredible opportunity for our community to connect, share knowledge, and build meaningful relationships while celebrating the culture that drives us all.”
“We knew we wanted to do something special with this year’s festival, and tapping the Culture Creators Foundation to help us create Lil’ WeezyCon felt like the perfect way to engage the community and bring college students into the mix,” said Brandon Pankey, Vice President of Live Nation Urban in the release. “This partnership allows us to expand beyond music and create an experience that leaves a lasting impact on young professionals and emerging creators.” For more information, visit www.lilweezyanafest.com.
Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino must be deposed in the ongoing litigation over the 2021 disaster at the Astroworld music festival, the Texas Supreme Court says.
In a ruling last week, the high court denied Live Nation’s petition seeking to stop the deposition, rejecting its arguments that victims were simply seeking to depose the executive in order to “harass Live Nation and to coerce settlements.”
The Oct. 15 ruling, which left in place a trial judge’s decision this summer forcing Rapino to testify, came nearly three years after the 2021 incident, in which a crowd crush during Travis Scott’s headlining set left 10 dead and hundreds injured.
The disaster spawned hundreds of lawsuits against Live Nation, Scott and others, collectively seeking billions of dollars in damages. Many of those cases have since settled on private terms, but some victims are still moving toward a jury trial. A so-called bellwether trial had been scheduled to start this week but was pushed back to February after more settlements were reached.
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In seeking to block Rapino’s deposition, Live Nation’s attorneys argued that he was the kind of top-level “apex” executive who can’t typically be dragged into court cases. They said he was far removed from actual decision-making and was “not involved in the festival”, meaning he didn’t have any unique information for the lawsuit that couldn’t be gleaned from other sources.
“Mr. Rapino’s only connection to the festival was as Live Nation’s ultimate executive,” the company’s lawyers wrote. “Any knowledge he may possess was obtained from others who have knowledge superior to his own.”
But attorneys for victims argued that Rapino had played a more direct role in the operations of Astroworld than Live Nation was letting on. Among other evidence, they cited an email Rapino sent on the night of the disaster, instructing Live Nation’s festival director to wait for more information about the death toll before canceling the rest of the festival. “If 5 died we would cancel,” he wrote in the message.
“Remarkably, Live Nation claims that Rapino was not the decisionmaker on whether to cancel the Festival,” the lawyers for the victims wrote. “This email proves otherwise, and plaintiffs want an opportunity to examine Rapino about it.”
Following last week’s ruling, it’s unclear when Rapino’s deposition will take place. A spokesperson for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment on the court’s order.
Sandbox Succession, the legacy division of Sandbox Entertainment, partnered with the Patsy Cline estate through Patsy Cline Enterprises. Under the agreement, Sandbox Succession will collaborate with Cline’s daughter and heir, Julie Fudge, to expand her legacy across film, TV, publishing, merchandising, hospitality and licensing. Gregory Hall, a key player in the management of Cline’s estate, will remain an instrumental member of the team. A new biography and documentary on Cline are both in development. Sandbox Succession also represents the estates of Johnny and June Carter Cash and Loretta Lynn.
Business-to-business digital music platform Tuned Global forged a partnership with streaming fraud detection company Beatdapp, through which Tuned Global will incorporate Beatdapp’s fraud detection capabilities into the Tuned Global platform. The deal will help Tuned Global ensure that client royalties are fairly distributed to rights holders. Beatdapp also has deals in place with Universal Music Group and the Mechanical Licensing Collective.
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Oak View Group (OVG) and Middle East event management and venue operator Ethara struck a joint venture to enable OVG’s entry into the Middle East market. Under the agreement, Ethara — which operates venues in the United Arab Emirates, including the Etihad Arena, Etihad Park, Yas Marina Circuit and Yas Conference Centre — will provide OVG with knowledge of local markets, with the two companies exploring growth opportunities together across the region. Ethara will also work closely with Rhubarb Hospitality Collection (RHC), a British venue caterer recently acquired by OVG, to improve the fan experience by providing food, beverage and hospitality services at venues across the Middle East.
Dreamliner, a provider of upscale travel coach buses for entertainers, acquired two events logistics companies: Denver-based Shomotion and Nashville-based Show Pro, with founders of each company joining Dreamliner’s executive team. Dreamliner will retain all Shomotion and Show Pro employees and expand its footprint by adding Shomotion’s Denver facility and Show Pro’s Nashville facility. The acquisition adds over 70 trucks and 220 trailers to Dreamliner’s offerings. – Jessica Nicholson
AtVenu, a leading provider of live event software and payment solutions, received a $130 million equity investment from Sixth Street Growth. The partnership will allow atVenu to expand and speed up the company’s growth into new live event markets, including sports and food and beverage. AtVenu helps ease the process of managing locations, inventory and the deployment of point-of-sale hardware while offering real-time data for organizers to optimize the event experience. According to a press release, the company processes more than $1.6 billion in merchandise and food and beverage volume every year and works on more than 125,000 events annually, from small clubs to stadiums. Raymond James served as atVenu’s financial advisor in the transaction.
Armada Music Group’s BEAT Music Fund acquired several new catalogs. They include the artist shares from a portion of techno pioneer and artist Kevin Saunderson‘s Inner City catalog; master and artist royalties for trance DJ and Coldharbour Recordings owner Markus Schulz; and the catalog of Robbie Rivera’s dance label Juicy Music. BEAT’s roster, through acquisitions, also includes Sultan + Shepard, Jax Jones, Amba Shepherd, VIVa MUSiC, Sola Records, King Street Sounds and Chocolate Puma.
Warner Music Group (WMG) Benelux acquired Netherlands-based record label Cloud 9 Recordings, which counts artists including Claude, Jaap Reesema, Kris Kross Amsterdam, Snelle and Turfy Gang on its roster. Under the deal, the Cloud 9 team will relocate to The Amsterdam Music Harbour, which serves as the creative hub of WMG Benelux in the Amsterdam Houthavens. Raymond van Vliet will retain his role as president of Cloud 9, which will remain a separate label, as well as his responsibilities at Blue Skies Publishing. Along with the acquisition, WMG Benelux entered an exclusive global administration agreement with the Cloud 9-affiliated Blue Skies Publishing, which represents songwriters including Claude, Davina Michelle, Edwin van Hoevelaak, Flemming, Frank van Etten, John Dirne, La Fuente and Snelle and owns several catalogs. Blue Skies Publishing will continue to manage the creative process with its current team, while its office in the Dutch town of Laren will serve as a satellite office for Cloud 9.
Moombix, described as a music education platform enabling adult hobbyists and aspiring music professionals to have one-on-one online classes with expert teachers, closed a seed funding round of over 1.9 million pounds ($2.47 million), led by Iceland’s Frumtak Ventures with participation from angel investors. The money will be used to scale the Moombix marketplace and improve the user experience, accelerate customer acquisition and prepare for a strategic launch into the U.K., where 200 teachers have already signed up to offer classes, according to a press release. Moombix offers classes on instrument learning, voice coaching, DJing, production and more.
Downtown-owned business-to-business distributor FUGA struck a new partnership with UNIFIED Music Group, a multi-service music company that operates across Melbourne, Syndey, L.A., New York, Nashville and Toronto. Under the deal, FUGA will support UNIFIED Recorded Music labels including UNFD and Domestic La La, which will leverage FUGA’s platform and suite of services, including strategic marketing and account management, social video management, YouTube channel partnerships, physical distribution, synch and licensing solutions via Downtown Music Publishing, and neighboring rights collection through Downtown Neighbouring Rights. Since 2022, UNIFIED has been a client of Downtown-owned royalty accounting platform Curve.
Live Nation signed a deal to manage Allas Live, a 2,500-capacity open-air venue within the Allas Sea Pool complex in Helsinki, Finland. Under the deal, Live Nation will also manage the Allas Live outdoor concert series in partnership with Allas Sea Pool.
ASM Global reached an agreement with the City of Worcester, Mass., to extend ASM’s management services of the city-owned DCU Center Arena and Convention Center. The five-member Civic Center Commission, which oversees ASM’s management contract on behalf of the city, voted unanimously to recommend the contract extension. As part of the 10-year extension, ASM has committed to a $3.5 million investment in the DCU Center that will focus on enhancing food and beverage operations, creating digital advertising opportunities and implementing further technology upgrades.
Acrisure Arena, located in Palm Springs, Calif., announced Silvercrest as the official sponsor of its exclusive outdoor VIP space, the Silvercrest Compound. The space includes a nine-hole mini golf course along with bocce ball, pickleball, half-court basketball, fire pits, and food and beverage offerings just steps away from the stage.
Festival creator Jeff Shuman has resigned from Live Nation, abruptly ending a successful three-year run that saw the 40-year-old launch a half-dozen festival brands, kicking off a race with rival promoter (and Shuman’s former partner) Goldenvoice to conquer the red-hot post-pandemic mini-festival market.
During his relatively brief run at Live Nation, Shuman built the company’s nostalgia-heavy lineup of one-day mini-festivals — events like the nu-metal and hard rock-driven Sick New World festival; the R&B-heavy Lovers and Friends and Fool in Love festivals; and the gangster rap-focused Once Upon a Time in LA.
Those events — part of Live Nations’s highly successful move into mini-festivals at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic — generated tens of millions of dollars in sales for Live Nation. Shuman briefly became the most successful concert promoter at the company, often besting the AEG-owned Goldenvoice on its own Los Angeles turf.
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(Neither Live Nation nor Shuman returned messages seeking comment for this story.)
But Shuman often clashed with company officials, and in recent months faced several costly cancellations including the shutdown of the Lovers and Friends festival in May in Las Vegas due to dangerously high winds. The costs of the cancellation, coupled with weaker-than-expected ticket sales for Fool in Love and the Latin-focused Bésame Mucho, which is set to take place in December at Dodger Stadium, ultimately led to Shuman’s exit.
“He was a complicated guy,” said one Live Nation executive who didn’t want to speak on the record. “He is extremely private and largely a ghost that you never see or hear from until he hucks a grenade in the room. He’s not afraid to pick a fight with anyone and didn’t have many allies at the end.”
Shuman would book dozens, sometimes hundreds, of artists for one of his genre-specific mini-festivals and work with artists like Usher or System of a Down to curate lineups that were heavy on nostalgia. The inaugural When We Were Young Festival in 2022, headlined by My Chemical Romance and Paramore, focused on late 2000s emo, punk and alternative, with 68 bands performing for more than 60,000 fans in a single day. That single-day event, initially scheduled for Oct. 22, 2022, was then repeated on Oct. 23, 2022, and then again on Oct. 29, 2022.
With tickets priced between $225 and $325, When We Were Young grossed more than $50 million in ticket sales over three days, far outperforming expectations. But the festival business is highly susceptible to the risk of severe weather, and a few hours of dangerous wind, rain or heat can cause an event’s cancellation. Those cancellations can trigger customer refunds, artist kill fees and costly lawsuits that quickly eat away at profits, even if those losses are partially covered by event cancellation insurance.
Since joining Live Nation, Shuman has faced several weather cancellations, including the costly cancellation of the 2024 edition of the Lover and Friends festival.
Shuman’s events have also seen sales slow as ticket prices rise — the 2024 edition of the When We Were Young Festival, headlined by My Chemical Romance, sold out the first day, Oct. 19, but still has plenty of tickets available for the Oct. 20 edition. GA ticket prices for this year’s festival start at $336 plus fees, with GA+ tickets priced at $521 + fees and VIP tickets selling for $618. That’s up from 2023 when tickets were priced at GA $249.99 plus fees, GA+ for $419.99 and VIP tickets for $519.99.
Where Shuman goes next is unclear, but he likely won’t return to Goldenvoice, where he worked from 2015 to 2020 after Live Nation purchased the Observatory in Santa Ana, Calif., which he booked for several years. Shuman’s exit from Goldenvoice reportedly followed a series of financial disagreements that left the two sides on bad terms, kicking off a rivalry between them when he headed to Live Nation.
“The fact that he’s quit both AEG and Live Nation means he doesn’t have a ton of options,” said one source who has worked for both companies. “There are other companies that create festivals, but Jeff’s festivals each had $8 to $12 million dollar budgets and he’s going to have a hard time finding someone else that can write that kind of check.”
Shares of Spotify rose 8.0% to $365.00 this week to lead all music stocks in a week the Billboard Global Music Index reached a new high and many of its largest components posted mid- to high-single digit gains.
The Swedish music streaming giant was boosted by a report by Pivotal Research Group that increased its price target to $510 from $460 and reiterated its “buy” rating. Spotify’s intraday high of $368.29 on Thursday set a new 52-week high for the stock and was its best mark since Feb. 21, 2021.
Spotify led the 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) to a record high 1,873.87, up 4.1% for the week, as ten of the stocks posted gains this week, nine lost value and one was unchanged. After a 4.8% drop the week ending Sept. 6 and stagnating since March, the BGMI has gained 7.4% in the last two weeks and raised its year-to-date gain to 22.2%—more than two percentage points above the gains of the Nasdaq composite (up 19.6%) and the S&P 500 (also up 19.6%).
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Stocks generally had a good week after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday a rate cut of half a percentage point, the first time the central bank lowered the overnight borrowing rate since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors had expected the Fed’s move, though, and had priced the effect of a rate cut into stock prices. Still, the Nasdaq composite climbed 1.5% to 17,948.32 and the S&P 500 rose 1.4% to 5,702.55. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index improved 0.7% to 2,736.81 and China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.2% to 2,736.81. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 fell 0.5% to 8,229.99.
Warner Music Group gained 4.9% to $30.44. WMG’s Atlantic Music Group laid off about 150 people Thursday as part of a restructuring plan that began in February. The week’s intraday high of $30.88 was WMG’s highest price since reaching $32.34 on July 24. The company also announced in an SEC filing this week it secured a $1.3 billion term loan that will be used to repay an existing loan and pay associated fees and expenses.
Live Nation shares also gained 4.9% to $103.65 and brought its year-to-date improvement to 10.7%. Thursday’s intraday high of $105.42 was its highest mark since April 1 and less than $2 below its 52-week high of $107.24. The concert promoter scored a win in Portland, Ore., this week after the city council upheld an August decision to allow the development of a 3,500-capacity music venue that will be operated by Live Nation.
Two other promoters also posted gains this week. MSG Entertainment, rose 4.6% to $42.16, while CTS Eventim improved 1.2% to 87.90 euros ($98.23). Another live entertainment company, Sphere Entertainment Co., dropped 2.7% to $41.09.
K-pop companies’ modest decline was an improvement from their consistently steep drops in recent weeks. The four South Korean companies had an average loss of 1.2% this week. HYBE fell 2.4%, JYP Entertainment dipped 1.2%, YG Entertainment slipped 0.9% and SM Entertainment lost 0.2%. After surging in previous years, the quartet has an average year-to-date loss of 40.4%.
Universal Music Group fell 3.6% to 22.75 euros ($25.42) following its Capital Markets Day on Tuesday. Analysts generally felt UMG set reachable financial targets and presented a believable roadmap about its strategy for the next four years. The Amsterdam-listed company laid out a strategy to achieve 8% to 10% cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR) for its subscription revenue and above 7% CAGR for total revenue.
Music streamer LiveOne had the biggest decline of the week, dropping 6.1% to $1.38. That put shares of LiveOne into the red for 2024 with a 1.4% year-to-date loss.
Despite having to pay more for everyday goods and services, Americans feel like they’re in a better place financially than earlier this year. How they choose to increase and cut back their spending, though, varies from music to vacations to groceries.
The data show consumers are generally in a good place. The latest numbers from University of Michigan’s survey of consumers released today (Sept. 13) show consumer sentiment is the best since May and 40% above its June 2022 low. Deloitte’s financial well-being index rose for the third straight month in August and has risen from 95.9 to 102.6 over the last year, which suggests that consumers are feeling good enough about their finances to increase spending on a range of products and services.
Listen to travel and leisure companies and you’ll get the impression that inflation-weary, cash-strapped consumers are holding close to their wallets. In August, Airbnb missed earnings and warned of slowing demand, while Booking.com told investors that it expected slower growth in the number of nights booked by customers. Disney’s theme parks are seeing softer demand. Comcast’s Universal theme park revenue fell 11% in the most recent quarter after having a record 2023.
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The concert business, though, doesn’t share the malaise of theme parks and vacation rentals. “We don’t see [a slowdown],” Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said Tuesday (Sept. 10) at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference in San Francisco. “And you almost hate saying it, because everyone else is saying it, but we do think we have a very unique product.” Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter and ticketing company, had a record second quarter with total revenue of $6 billion, up 7%, and expects 2024 will be a record year.
Concerts have the advantage of creating a more visceral reaction than other types of entertainment. And because it’s in-person and live, Rapino explained, it’s a unique experience with a competitive advantage. “[Fans] want to connect with that artist,” he said. “There’s no digital duplicate replication here. You cannot watch that show at home. You do not get goosebumps when you watch it on Apple TV.”
Live music isn’t totally immune to economic woes, of course. Numerous tours — including The Black Keys and Jennifer Lopez — have been cancelled due to poor ticket sales. Festivals ranging from Desert Daze in California to Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis pulled the plug in 2024 due to economic reasons. And as Billboard has documented in recent years, the financial strain of touring artists following the pandemic has been very real. Higher costs for transportation, fuel and food have forced artists to economize and cut back on expenses to turn a profit.
Fans are still spending dearly on a small number of superstars, though. Surge pricing used in the Oasis on-sale inflated the cost of primary tickets beyond many fans’ comfort zones. Sphere in Las Vegas has drawn high-spending fans to residencies by U2, Phish and Dead & Co., and The Eagles’ upcoming shows should do similarly well. Prices to Adele’s final residency performance at The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas before an indefinite hiatus soared beyond $17,000 for top-tier seats.
Consumers continue to spend on recorded music, too. According to the RIAA’s mid-year report, the parts of the business that involve direct consumer spending — subscriptions, physical formats and digital downloads — rose 4.7% in the first six months of 2024. Subscription revenue improved 5.1% and surpassed 60% of total recorded music revenue. Spending on physical music formats fared even better, rising 12.7% on the strength of a 17.0% increase in vinyl sales. Download spending, an increasingly inconsequential part of the business, fell 15.8%.
Segments that don’t represent consumer spending — ad-supported streaming, synchronization royalties and SoundExchange royalties — rose just 0.9%. Ad-supported on-demand streaming, the biggest component of the non-spending segment, rose just 1.7%. (SoundExchange royalties include ad-supported streaming in addition to satellite radio royalties, which stem from direct consumer spending, and cable radio stations, which do not.) Synchronization royalties — it reflects the money flowing into advertisements and TV and film production — dropped 9.8%.
Elsewhere in the entertainment business, spending is mixed. U.S. movie ticket sales were down to $3.6 billion from $4 billion, though the pop culture sensation of Barbie and Oppenheimer in the summer of 2023 made for a tough comparison. U.S. video game revenue is expected to rise about 2.2% to $47 billion in 2024, according to market research firm Newzoo.
While consumer are looking to splurge on entertainment, they’re much more price conscious about everyday items. According to the consulting company McKinsey, people are cutting back on spending on essentials — especially gasoline and fresh produce — as well as home improvement and domestic flights.
During a 1980 presidential debate, Ronald Reagan posed a now-famous question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” In 2024, many Americans feel they were better off in 2020 — even though the economy was crippled by the pandemic that year. The music industry is better off today than four years ago. And although recorded music growth has slowed this year, 2024 will be better than 2023, too.
The U.S. Department of Justice has refiled its historic anti-trust lawsuit against concert promoter Live Nation, with 10 additional states joining the effort to break up the company more than a decade after its 2010 merger with Ticketmaster.
The Attorneys General for Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Vermont were added to an amended complaint filed in New York’s Southern District on Monday (Aug. 19), bringing the total number of states participating in the lawsuit to 40 total, along with the District of Columbia.
“There is nothing new in the Amended Complaint,” a statement from Live Nation reads. “The lawsuit still won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows. We look forward to sharing more facts as the case progresses.”
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The amended lawsuit re-alleges that Live Nation and Ticketmaster acted like a monopoly and violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by using illegal tactics to expand its concert promotion business and management of amphitheaters. The new complaint also includes new details about how Live Nation allegedly expanded its ticketing business after it merged with Ticketmaster in 2009, including information about the company’s controversial relationship with arena developer and operator Oak View Group (OVG). Founded in 2015 by Tim Leiweke and music manager Irving Azoff, Oak View Group manages nearly 200 venues and relies on Live Nation to bring major tours to its concert facilities, which includes such top U.S. venues as Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, the Moody Center in Austin and UBS Arena in Belmont, N.Y.
As the building manager’s main representative, OVG is supposed to manage the competitive process for selecting a venue’s ticketing contract, but the complaint alleges that OVG is obligated to “advocate for exclusive agreements with Ticketmaster for more than 100 venues Oak View Group manages” — which the lawsuit claims essentially “locks those venues into long-term exclusive Ticketmaster agreements.” The agreement, the government argues, unfairly prevents third-party competitors from entering the ticketing space while compensating OVG with a substantial “incentive payment” from Live Nation plus significant annual payments.
In fairness, OVG’s competitor AEG — which also competes with Live Nation for concert promotion and ticketing — also accepted payments for the buildings it managed under ASM Global, the building management firm it owned with Canadian private equity firm Onex and recently sold to Legends Hospitality.
The revised complaint does not include additional damaging exchanges between Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and potential competitors, or new damaging information that shows the company employing heavy-handed tactics. Instead, it contains more analysis of the concert market following the merger of Live Nation-Ticketmaster. On that front, according to the complaint, “Live Nation’s conduct has harmed fans because they have been left with fewer concerts, have had more limited choices among touring artists, have paid higher ticketing fees, and have experienced a lower-quality ticketing experience than they otherwise would have but for Live Nation’s anticompetitive conduct.”
Consumers are strained by everything from high food prices to soaring rents and mortgage costs — but aren’t giving up live music.
Two years after the concert industry roared back to life in the wake of the COVID pandemic, Live Nation had another recording-setting second quarter. Revenue grew 7% to more than $6 billion while adjusted operating income (AOI) climbed 21% to $716 million. North America was particularly strong, as fan attendance climbed 17% and amphitheater attendance rose about 40%.
That followed a record first quarter in which Live Nation had revenue of $3.8 billion, up 21%, and AOI of $367 million. A notable hiccup during the second quarter was an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in May, although that hasn’t impacted operations and will take years to move through the courts.
During Tuesday’s earnings call, CEO Michael Rapino and president/CFO Joe Berchtold gave analysts and investors their thoughts on recent tour cancellations, expectations for the second half of 2024 and next year, and Live Nation’s long-term growth rate.
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Cancellations are “in line” with historical trends
Some recent high-profile tour cancellations and weaker-than-expected festival sales have some people wondering if the live music business bit off more than it could chew. Coachella ticket sales were slower than usual, as were those of JazzFest, Beach Life, Welcome to Rockville and Governors Ball. Live Nation had two high-profile tour cancellations in recent months: The Black Keys and Jennifer Lopez.
But Live Nation, the world’s largest promoter, isn’t seeing anything out of the ordinary, said Berchtold. Cancellation rates “historically run kind of 4%-5% of shows [and] about a percent and a half of fans,” he said, and this year’s cancellations are “[a]bsolutely in line with historical trends. I think most of the reports that we’ve seen have been efforts to take one or two data points out of a very large number of tours and shows, and we’re just not seeing anything unusual there.”
“Continued growth” in the second half of the 2024 and into 2025
Berchtold said Live Nation expects to see “continued growth” in fan attendance in the second half of the year. Year-to-date ticket sales to 2024 concerts are 118 million, according to Tuesday’s earnings release, higher than 2023. Sales for arenas, amphitheaters, theater and club shows are up double digits.
As for 2025, Live Nation expects more stadium shows than it had two years ago. This year, a slowdown in stadium shows was partly caused by the Paris Olympics causing “most of France to shut down” for a month, said Rapino. Amphitheater shows provide better margins and high per-fan spending, but more stadium shows means a surge in ticket sales in late 2024 from tour on-sales, and higher gross transaction values. “One stadium show is triple the band count and triple the average ticket price of an amphitheater show,” said Berchtold.
Pushing 10% growth over the long term
After surging in 2022 and 2023 from post-pandemic pent-up demand, Live Nation is settling into a steady, long-term growth rate of 9%-10% annually. The necessary trends are in place, said Rapino: the globalization of the market, the supply of artists, consumer demand, the fan experience and favorable economic factors. Just don’t expect the post-pandemic growth to continue. “We never predicted that the industry was going to grow at 30% a year going forward,” said Rapino.
Live Nation continued on its post-pandemic growth trajectory with another record-setting second quarter. Revenue grew 7% to a record $6.02 billion, and adjusted operating income (AOI) improved 21% to $716 million due to a 61% gain in the concerts segment’s AOI, the company announced Tuesday (July 30).
Despite occasional news about canceled tours and festivals, Live Nation’s results suggest fan demand is strong enough to meet the supply of artists on tour. Cancellation rates for North American concerts are tracking lower than they were in 2023, according to the company, and Live Nation hosted 39 million fans globally in the quarter, up 5% from the prior-year quarter. As tours shifted from stadiums to smaller venues, the total number of concerts increased 23.2% in North America and rose 19.9% overall.
Through the first six months of 2024, total revenue grew 12% to $9.8 billion and AOI improved 19% to $1.08 billion. The number of events grew 16.9% to 25,881, while the number of fans at Live Nation concerts and festivals rose 10.4% to 61.8 million.
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“We continue to see strong demand globally, with a growing variety of shows attracting both casual and diehard fans who are buying tickets at all price points, which speaks to the unique experience only live concerts can provide,” CEO Michael Rapino said in a statement.
With fewer stadium shows than the prior year, Live Nation is leaning on arenas and high-margin amphitheaters in 2024. Arena attendance was up by double digits globally, theater and club attendance rose 15% and amphitheater attendance was up about 40%. Amphitheaters in particular are good for Live Nation’s bottom line. Almost a third of Live Nation’s amphitheaters have been updated since 2022 — including with new bar designs and upgraded VIP boxes — and have produced an aggregate return of over 30%, according to the company.
In the ticketing division, revenue was up 3% to $731 million and AOI was flat at $293 million, and the quarter ranked among the company’s top five in terms of transacted and reported ticket sales. Ticketmaster sold 78 million fee-bearing tickets in the quarter, about the same as the prior-year quarter. Fee-bearing gross transaction value was even at $8.4 billion.
Sponsorships and advertising revenue grew 3% to $312 million and AOI rose 10% to $223 million. Live Nation secured a multi-year, multi-festival partnership with Coca-Cola and an extension with video streaming service Hulu to be the official streaming destination for Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.
The latest numbers show the extent to which Live Nation has grown since the touring business returned from pandemic-era shutdowns in 2020 and 2021. Second-quarter revenue was 36% greater than the $4.43 billion the company saw in the second quarter of 2022, and AOI was 49% above Live Nation’s $480 million of AOI in the same period in 2022. What’s more, the business is considerably larger than it was before the pandemic. Second-quarter revenue and AOI were up 90.8% and 124.4%, respectively, from the same quarter in 2019.
Topline results for Q2:
Total revenue of $6.02 billion, up 7%, driven by an 8% increase in concert revenue.
Adjusted operating income of $716.2 million, up 21%, driven by a 61% increase in concerts AOI.
Total attendance rose 4.9% to 38.9 million.
The number of concerts rose 19.9% to 14,678.