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Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has for many years been a forceful advocate for a level playing field in the live-entertainment industry, whether leading the “Save Our Stages” bill that brought some $16 billion in pandemic relief to independent venues and theaters to calling for an antitrust investigation into the ticketing business — and by extension Live Nation.
While Senators Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal (of New Jersey) were successful in getting that investigation — and ultimately the Department of Justice’s 2024 lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster — under way, the effort suffered a major setback on Monday when the case was settled, in the wake of several concessions from Live Nation.
Sen. Klobuchar has argued all along that Live Nation is a monopoly, and has been ever since it and Ticketmaster merged in 2010. After she noted that “most of the news today is about the war [in Iran], but we will do our best in getting out the facts,” Variety spoke with her on Monday afternoon about the settlement.
Senator, what is your honest opinion of this settlement?
That this is a weak settlement, and that all signs point to a [Live Nation being a] monopoly: If it looks like a monopoly and quacks like a monopoly, it is a monopoly, and that is Live Nation-Ticketmaster. They have more than 80% of the primary ticketing market for major concert venues; they own 40 of the top 50 amphitheaters; and they control 60% of promotion revenue at major concert venues — and of course, they have huge percentages of the pro sports and college sports games as well.
So all that aside, this settlement does little to lower costs or preserve independent venues, or protect fans. There are some good things in it, like exclusive contracts — that was a bill I introduced — being limited to four years. But without breaking them up, which has successfully worked in the case of AT&T, I just don’t think fans are going to get the deal out of this that they deserve.
And adding to the smell of the whole thing and how they got there, it starts with getting rid of [former assistant attorney general for the antitrust division] Gail Slater [late last month], right before this happened. She was very well respected as someone who called things as they were and did her job.
Then you go into how they did this — where they reached an agreement and didn’t even tell their own lawyers. As judge Arun said today, the Justice Department showed absolute disrespect for the court and the jury — and, I would add, it’s absolutely disrespectful to fans.
Do you feel like that DOJ’s case had any chance of actually splitting up Live Nation and Ticketmaster? A lot of people were skeptical about that from the beginning.
Well, I was hopeful, with Gail Slater there. I trusted her and I helped move her nomination through, and here she was pushed out right before this case [was settled]. I just don’t know how much clearer we have to be [to demonstrate that a company is a monopoly]. Oftentimes with antitrust decisions, when a case is brought by one of one political party and then the other, actually are strong, so that had given a lot of us hope that this was actually going to proceed. But as the months went on, we saw more and more how this administration is just willing to basically sell to the biggest bidder — and this will be really hard with future cases.
On that note, why did you think it got this far?
When they put [Slater] in there, it was a signal that they were going to take this stuff seriously. And I think that because she worked for Vance [as an economic policy advisor], people liked her on both sides of the aisle — 78 out of 100 voted for her, with 19 against and three not present, in a Republican-run Congress. So she got the votes of everyone from like Mike Lee to Elizabeth Warren. That shows just what a strong leader she was, so it’s really frustrating. I thought there was a chance, with a strong antitrust enforcer with strong support for her in Congress — you would hope that equals a fair shake for consumers and fans, but that’s not the case with this administration.
Do you think the individual states’ suits, which are ongoing, can make a difference?
Yes. We’ve seen state suits with the administration, of course, but also with companies, that have made a difference, especially when they’re sticking together.
Senator, is there anything more you’d like to say before we get off the phone about this that you haven’t already?
Yes, I’m going to be introducing a bill to strengthen the review process that I had I’ve been working on this for months, but I’m going to introduce it next week. That would [force] antitrust settlements to make stronger requirements about the circumstances that they have to disclose, and also ensuring that courts don’t approve settlements that fail to resolve antitrust issues.
Thank you senator, please keep us updated on that.
Variety will have more on the situation as it develops.
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