On Wednesday, the states pressing to break up Live Nation will rest their case in Manhattan federal court, concluding a years-long, herculean effort to prove that the ticketing and concert promotion company ran an illegal monopoly. In a surreal twist, the Trump administration already threw in the towel earlier this month, when a visibly startled Justice Department lawyer informed an equally startled judge that they had apparently reached a settlement that would allow Live Nation to keep Ticketmaster. Some state attorneys general took the cue and claimed a share of the $200 million payout. But 32 others—including New York, Florida, and Texas, along with the District of Columbia—are still fighting on, bringing in fearsome antitrust litigator Jeffrey Kessler and hoping for a result that could appease the Swifties.

Of course, I’m interested in who will actually win the case—but also what’s at stake for Live Nation and the music industry more broadly. So tonight I’m joined by music-business savant and What I’m Hearing contributor Dave Brooks to discuss the health of the business, how tickets got so expensive, what breaking up Live Nation would mean for fans, and why C.E.O. Michael Rapino might be his own worst enemy. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Eriq Gardner: Something’s been nagging me: the actual health of the live concert business. During Rapino’s testimony, Kessler noted that Live Nation has doubled in size since Rapino once boasted his company had “incredible market power around the world.” Rapino testified that he couldn’t remember the comment, and that everyone else has grown, too. We’re told the industry is booming, yet we’re also here because something’s broken. Is this a healthy business or not?

Dave Brooks: Live Nation made $25.2 billion in revenue last year, up 9 percent over 2024. Live Nation also had nearly $2.4 billion in EBITDA. Its next-biggest rival, AEG, is privately held, but according to sales figures tracked by Billboard, AEG reported $2.5 billion in ticket sales for 2025 without its biggest client, Taylor Swift, on the road.

The problem is that even as the major promoters are generating record ticket sales, concert tickets still feel out of reach for many fans. The average ticket price for one of the top 100 highest-grossing tours for 2025 is about $150, which is unaffordable for the average family of four. Add in the scalpers who buy up tickets and list them on resale sites for huge markups, and the whole system starts to feel unfair, especially for that top echelon of concerts—Bad Bunny, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, etcetera. Demand is sky high for those tickets, even in stadiums that hold 70,000 to 80,000 people. There are still plenty of deals out there for fans looking for good value—festivals, for instance. But it’s the high-demand superstars like Taylor and Adele who drive headlines and command the big price tags, creating major profits and major headaches for the big concert promoters like Live Nation.

Eriq: You’ve been following this space for quite some time. How has your perspective changed since Live Nation acquired Ticketmaster in 2010?

Dave: The biggest change has been the advent of global touring, with artists striking all-in deals with promoters like Live Nation and AEG for a bigger payday. Before the merger, most tours were booked on a show-by-show basis. Today, most agents make just two calls, one to AEG and another to Live Nation, and whichever promoter offers the most money gets the tour. If the artist picks Live Nation, they will play Live Nation venues that use Ticketmaster and work with Live Nation’s international touring partners for shows abroad. Sponsorships will often be handled by Live Nation’s own salespeople. This system allows Live Nation to pay the artist more money—the flywheel model you’ve heard so much about in this trial.

Eriq: Let’s talk about C.E.O. Michael Rapino. The government is trying to cast him as the villain—the guy nickel-and-diming fans. By Kessler’s telling, roughly 90 percent of Rapino’s compensation is tied to hitting financial targets. You’ve dug into the record on the compensation piece.

Dave: Yes, that’s right—for example, Kessler called Rapino out for a new rule banning fans from bringing their own chairs to sit on amphitheater lawns and requiring them to rent chairs instead. Rapino claimed it was a safety issue, but Kessler pointed out it generated $7 million. This was a weird example, since Rapino is not known for being granular when it comes to company operations. Being a promoter means spending a lot of bad money on artists and ego that it will never come close to recouping.

Rapino’s Achilles’ heel, however, is power, and his obsession with identifying and eliminating competitive threats. We saw it in emails cited in the D.O.J.’s original complaint. There were allegations that Rapino conspired with Oak View Group C.E.O. Tim Leiweke and music mogul Irving Azoff to pressure Silver Lake to stop funding a tiny Australian concert promotion company that he saw as a future threat. On the stand, Kessler laid into Rapino, asking him to explain what he meant by once saying there was a “moat around” Live Nation’s business.  (“What’s the moat?” Kessler asked, implying it was exclusive contracts.)

According to Live Nation’s most recent proxy statement, Rapino’s total comp was $32.9 million in 2024—$3 million in base salary; $18.5 million cash in non-equity incentive pay for hitting financial targets in 2023; $1.6 million for travel, including use of a private jet; and $9.8 million in stock. The way his contract is structured, he tends to make the most money in signing years—when he signed his most recent deal, in 2022, he was paid $116 million in stock. I will add that much of his salary is performance-based, and the company has clawed back stock in the past, including during Covid.

Eriq: Hitting performance targets could get a lot harder for Rapino if this case goes sideways. Kessler wasn’t allowed to put a precise figure in front of the jury, but the government was happy to hint that Rapino effectively has about $27 million riding on the outcome. Not exactly pocket change.

Dave: I’ll add that, as one of the company’s largest individual shareholders, Rapino has a lot more than $27 million riding on the outcome.

Dave: You saw Kessler grill Rapino on the stand. What stood out?

Eriq: Watching that exchange, it occurred to me that if the states do force a breakup, Live Nation’s adversaries may look back at the D.O.J.’s settlement earlier this month as the best thing that ever happened to them.

Don’t get me wrong—during the first week, the feds had their moments. The testimony from former Barclays Center executive John Abbamondi was one of them. The government played a phone call during which Rapino, hearing that Barclays might switch to a Ticketmaster rival, let loose some colorful language. Abbamondi testified that he felt threatened. When Barclays ultimately went with SeatGeek, a Billie Eilish show was suddenly relocated, which was supposedly the “artist’s decision.” Make of that what you will.

But I do wonder whether the retaliation theory lands as a bit abstract for a jury. By contrast, Kessler’s approach feels much more legible. He’s reframing the case around something jurors intuitively understand: greed. The idea is that Live Nation can afford to run thinner margins on promotion, because it makes it all back, and then some, on ticketing, fees, and everything else, once fans are inside the ecosystem. It’s a subtle pivot befitting of a seasoned trial lawyer.

Going into this trial, I wasn’t sure what to make of so many sports executives testifying. But it became clear that the company faces far more competition in sports, especially at the collegiate level, than it does in concerts. And there’s a reason: When a public university is selecting a ticketing vendor for football or basketball, it’s often bound by state procurement rules that require competitive bidding. When the playing field is level, Ticketmaster doesn’t always win.

Dave: You’re right about that—sports ticketing is dominated by Paciolan, a ticketing company out of Irvine, California, that Ticketmaster was forced to sell in 2010 as a condition of its merger with Live Nation. Paciolan is not a fee-per-ticket business like Ticketmaster, and the two companies tend to stay out of each other’s way. When Tim Leiweke was running Oak View and realized that several arenas under the company’s purview had large concert businesses, he switched some from Paciolan over to Ticketmaster.

Eriq: Kessler is doing a strong job, given he’s only been on this case for a couple of weeks. Remember, the states moved quickly to bring him in after the D.O.J. stepped back. Which raises an awkward question: Did they issue an R.F.P. to see if there were other capable firms willing to take this on for less? Kessler bills around $2,000 an hour and is likely clearing millions in this case. I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably not.

Then again, if he succeeds, few will complain. And his firm, Winston & Strawn, may pick up other government antitrust cases. I’ve heard that California A.G. Rob Bonta is scouting private counsel for a forthcoming case attacking the Paramount–WBD merger.

Eriq: Let’s say the states win. What actually changes for artists, venues, and fans?

Dave: Splitting up Live Nation and Ticketmaster would have almost no impact on fans in the short term. The two factors driving ticket prices—the amount the artist charges the fan, and the fees the ticketing company charges—would be essentially unchanged.

For venues, defanging Ticketmaster would hypothetically lead to more ticketing companies competing for a venue’s business, but that wouldn’t necessarily put downward pressure on ticket prices. The more companies that bid for a venue’s ticketing rights, the more they pay upfront to win those rights—which means ticketing companies have to charge higher fees to recoup. Ticketing is one of those areas where increased competition actually drives the price up.

Eriq: How integrated is the touring business? If you broke Ticketmaster off tomorrow, what happens?

Dave: Live Nation would immediately sign an exclusive agreement with Ticketmaster and continue selling all of its tickets on the service. There would be no material change for consumers. Same thing with Live Nation divesting its concert promotions business from its venue management business. As part of the D.O.J. agreement, Live Nation agreed to sell off its third-party amphitheater management business, but Live Nation will still promote concerts and tours at these sheds, as they’re known in live music parlance. A third-party management company will just manage the facility with its own staff.

Eriq: If Live Nation comes out of this intact, what message does that send to the industry?

Dave: I think it will come away intact, and most lawyers I’ve spoken with agree. Trump and the Justice Department have already tarnished this whole thing—most people think that former D.O.J. antitrust boss Gail Slater had a strong case against Live Nation and the company was able to hire a few well-connected lobbyists and get a settlement negotiated on a golf course.

Eriq: I’m sure we’re going to hear more about that soon. The Justice Department will be filing papers later this week defending the settlement, and then the states will respond in kind, much as they’re now doing in that fight over the Hewlett Packard–Juniper merger settlement. Thanks to states leading an investigation in that HP case, some really juicy information is surfacing, as evidenced by a Wall Street Journal article that reported that Ari Emanuel urged Trump to resolve the Live Nation case, with Trump then asking around during trial, “What’s the holdup?” Expect more like that. Call it open season for legal reporters.

Dave: Some of the more embarrassing aspects of the case have leaked out thanks in part to gadfly-style reporter and lawyer Matthew Lee with Inner City Press, who won a motion to have all trial evidence shared on the public docket. That led to the infamous “Robbing Them Blind” Slack messages in which two low-level employees spent hours bragging about how they overcharge fans for parking and think Kid Rock fans are “idiots.” There are also emails in evidence showing major L.A. promoters conspiring to pressure the L.A. Philharmonic to prevent AEG from bringing Ben Platt to the Hollywood Bowl.

It will be interesting to see how Live Nation presents its case next week. I think their best strategy will be to muddy the waters for the jury, and create so much doubt and confusion about what is and isn’t a monopoly that the jury just throws up their hands.

Thanks, Eriq. I’ll be back on Thursday.

Matt