In the fourth week of Live Nation’s antitrust trial, key defense witnesses took the stand as the concert giant continued its case in front of a jury — and the company also accused its biggest rival of using underhanded tactics to prevent a key witness from testifying.
you are reading boardLive Nation’s weekly trial recap, a weekly one-sheet of everything that happened in the monopoly case against the concert giant. Stay here every Friday for all the testimonies and big events you may have missed.
What happened: After state attorneys general rested their case last week, Live Nation continued to present its case to the jury this week — trying to convince them to reject its narrative that the company is an illegal monopolist that bullies music venues into using Ticketmaster.
The blockbuster lawsuit has been going on in Manhattan federal court since early March. It was initially led by the US Justice Department, but federal authorities reached a settlement with Live Nation a week after the hearing. New York, California and dozens of other states said the deal wasn’t strong enough and have moved forward with trials aimed at breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
This week was relatively short in the trial, with no jury testimony on Wednesday (April 1) or Thursday (April 2) as the judge and parties were dealing with legal issues. The trial continues on Monday (April 6), with closing statements and jury deliberations expected to begin at some point in the next week.
Who testified: A few weeks later, the former boss of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center testified that he believed Live Nation Major artists were threatened to be stopped If the venue changed from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek, the current top executive in the field took a stance and pushed back on that story.
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Laurie JacobyThe CEO of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment testified Tuesday about problems during SeatGeek’s tenure as the venue’s ticketer, including selling out concerts by The Strokes and My Chemical Romance. Inner City Press. She told jurors that those issues made it difficult to attract and retain acts, which ultimately prompted the venue to switch back to Ticketmaster.
Other Live Nation witnesses similarly contradicted earlier testimony. In the first week of testing, an executive at the NHL’s Minnesota Wild told the jurors He stuck with Ticketmaster because he feared the “catastrophic” problem of losing the Live Nation concert. But on Monday, As reported mlexAn executive with the NHL’s Washington Capitals testified that Ticketmaster is a “great business partner”.
“Their professionalism and the way they deal with partners is excellent,” said Jim Van StonePresident of Business Operations at Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which also owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards and DC’s Capital One Arena. “Ticketmaster… has met all of our needs. We believe in the fact that an exclusive relationship (with Ticketmaster) is a better fit for us.”
Expert witnesses were also testifying this week Eric BudishProfessor at the University of Chicago, who said Ticketmaster has a real competitive edge against rival ticketing services mlex. But during cross-examination, he also admitted that he was paid more than $1 million by Live Nation for his services as an expert economic witness in the case.
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Perhaps the biggest fireworks of the week came not in the form of live testimony in front of the jury, but in the form of legal filings in front of the judge. In a stinging motion filed Thursday, Live Nation sought sanctions (judicial penalties) against the states over allegations that AEG secretly provided them with a “dossier of personal information” about a former employee, which they exploited to prevent her from testifying.
“This blatant attempt to prevent a witness from giving truthful testimony through intimidation is intolerable,” Live Nation’s lawyers wrote, asking the judge to inform jurors that AEG and the state were “closely coordinating” and had tried to suppress testimony that AXS “was never of the same quality as Ticketmaster.”
why it matters: Jacoby, Van Stone and Budish’s testimony goes to the core of Live Nation’s defense: that it has gained its huge market share over the past 15 years not through anti-competitive behavior, but by simply being better than its competitors.
Threats to Barclays Center over going with SeatGeek? No, Jacoby said – Ticketmaster was the better ticketing option for the arena. Improper use of exclusivity contracts making it difficult to change locations? No, Van Stone said – exclusivity is what some venues themselves prefer.
The ban proposal makes the same argument. Live Nation alleges that AEG and the state went to such lengths to suppress the former employee’s testimony because it would have revealed that AEG’s AXS ticketing system just not that good As Ticketmaster – Live Nation says this would “fundamentally weaken the plaintiffs’ case.” If allowed, this would send a powerful message to jurors that the government was concerned that the argument might succeed.
