Day 13 of the Live Nation Trial: Plaintiffs’ Experts Come to Play
Does Live Nation punish venues that switch from Ticketmaster? Does Ticketmaster use its market power to overcharge fans? Experts made the case that they do.
Until this week, the jury in the Live Nation/Ticketmaster antitrust case had largely been asked to choose between competing personal accounts of events related to the world’s largest concert promoter and its wholly owned subsidiary, the world’s largest ticketing company.
Venue operators have testified that they faced threats or retaliation after switching from Ticketmaster, and rival ticketing companies have described being forced out of the market due to Ticketmaster’s long-term exclusive agreements with venues. Live Nation, on the other hand, has characterized its success as the product of innovation and superior quality.
On Monday and Tuesday, the plaintiff states brought in two expert witnesses, Dr. Nicholas Hill and Dr. Rosa Abrantes-Metz, to quantify Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s market share and conduct.
The Barclays Debacle… Again!
The Barclays Center story has become somewhat of a Shakespearean tragedy in this trial. Repeatedly mentioned by various witnesses, the incident of Barclays switching from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek features a contract dispute, an expletive-laced phone call and alleged threats and retaliation by the most powerful live entertainment company in the world.
John Abbamondi, the arena’s former CEO, told the court that when he announced in 2021 that Barclays would switch from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino threatened and then withheld Live Nation concerts from the venue, including a Billie Eilish show that had previously been scheduled there. Rapino testified that the decline in shows at Barclays was the predictable consequence of the UBS Arena opening nearby, and his anger in the call reflected his surprise at Barclays trying to exit a contract early under a COVID clause no other arena had attempted.
Rapino’s testimony was persuasive on the stand, but the numbers, according to Hill, don’t support his version of events. Hill found that Barclays saw a sharp drop in Live Nation shows when it left Ticketmaster and (critically) a rebound when it returned to Ticketmaster the following year. In 2022, after Barclays switched from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek, it hosted 14 Live Nation shows, down from 23 in 2019. In 2023, after Barclays returned to Ticketmaster, it hosted 28 Live Nation shows, and in 2024, Barclays had 34 Live Nation shows.
Data Suggests Live Nation Retaliation
Hill extended this analysis to NBA and NHL arenas. From 2017 through 2024, venues that moved away from Ticketmaster saw Live Nation shows decline from an average of 17 to 11 in the year after switching; those that moved to Ticketmaster saw shows rise from 14 to 27. It’s hard to get a clearer picture of the conduct that the plaintiff states are alleging in this case than this.
This testament has been echoed throughout the trial. On Tuesday, Bryan Perez, the CEO of AXS, Ticketmaster’s biggest rival, detailed a number of venues that he said declined to sign with AXS as its primary ticketing service because they feared losing Live Nation shows. While powerful, Perez and others are, at the end of the day, Live Nation and Ticketmaster competitors. What makes Hill’s analysis so compelling is that the jury doesn’t have to speculate about motives or self-interest.
Damages Expert
More than ever, proving damages is essential for the states. They passed up cashing in on the $287 million DOJ settlement to push forward with the trial, betting that the jury will award them with even greater damages. On Tuesday, they called Dr. Rosa Abrantes-Metz, a University of Chicago economist who previously served as an expert witness on behalf of the United States against Google in the ad tech matter, which we covered here at Big Tech on Trial.
Abrantes-Metz accepted Hill’s findings that Ticketmaster dominates the market and engages in anticompetitive conduct as a given. From there, her job was to discern what Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive conduct actually costs fans.
Analyzing hundreds of contracts from 2018 through 2024, Abrantes-Metz concluded that Ticketmaster charges venues an extra $2.30 per ticket. Most of that—between 68 and 75 percent—gets passed directly to fans, meaning fans pay an overcharge of roughly $1.56 to $1.72 per ticket.
To measure the effect of Ticketmaster’s alleged anticompetitive behavior, Abrantes-Metz treated AXS as a benchmark for a competitive market. She concluded that the two companies were roughly comparable in quality and face-value ticket pricing, then stripped out all other factors that could influence a show’s cost. What remained, she testified, was a clear overcharge: Ticketmaster charged $2.30 more per ticket than AXS.
Was AXS really comparable to Ticketmaster in 2018? During a contentious cross-examination, the defense hammered at the fact that Abrantes-Metz treated AXS and Ticketmaster as comparable in quality from 2018 through 2024. Indeed, even the CEO of AXS and its parent company AEG have testified that AXS didn’t quite match up to Ticketmaster until after the pandemic. According to Abrantes-Metz’s data, though, the Ticketmaster overcharges have increased year-by-year, so the fact that she included 2018 and 2019 “only reduced” the calculated damages per ticket.
Expert testimony is always central to antitrust cases. In a trial decided in part by a jury, its impact can be hard to gauge. While the jurors undoubtedly understood that Abrantes-Metz concluded Ticketmaster to be overcharging $2.30 per ticket, much of her direct testimony was devoted to laying the groundwork of her analysis, which was less riveting than other testimony we’ve heard.
The sole doctor on the jury was taking notes throughout her testimony—others were fidgeting or closing their eyes at times.
The plaintiffs are expected to rest their case today!
Wasn't Granger supposed to testify today?