Reporting published over the weekend revealed that US President Donald Trump personally intervened to force a Justice Department settlement with Ticketmaster owner Live Nation, which faced a high-profile antitrust trial for abusing its market power and illegally crushing competition.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the Justice Department, which sued Live Nation in 2024 during former President Joe Biden’s administration, was “preparing to wage a legal battle more than a decade in the making against the world’s largest concert promoter. Then President Trump called.” A senior DOJ official relayed to associates that the president told them to “settle it.”
Trump’s intervention reportedly came just days before the March 2 trial began in the antitrust case, the product of a yearslong investigation into the ticketing and concert behemoth. The Justice Department formally announced the settlement on March 9; the DOJ antitrust division’s counsel in the case appeared to be unaware of the deal until he appeared in court for trial.
According to the Journal, Trump’s instruction to the DOJ to settle the Live Nation case came shortly after the president met with the company’s CEO, Michael Rapino, in the Oval Office in late February.
“Trump had called the meeting to discuss how to improve bookings at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to people familiar with the conversation,” the Journal reported. “He also wanted to know why the company hadn’t reached a deal over its lawsuit.”
“On March 5, Rapino was back at the White House, meeting White House Counsel David Warrington and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to put the finishing touches on a deal. He was accompanied by Sullivan & Cromwell’s James McDonald, who had little antitrust experience but had been representing Trump in two New York appeals,” the newspaper added. “The president stopped by to check on the negotiations. How is this not settled yet? asked Trump… By the end of the meeting, it was.”
Since the start of Trump’s second White House term, the Justice Department has repeatedly settled cases against corporations accused of violating the nation’s antitrust laws. MS NOW reported last month that “DOJ staff have privately complained that the Trump administration is essentially deciding not to enforce antitrust laws that are critical to keeping companies from becoming single-source providers and being able to charge enormous sums for their product or service.”
The Biden Justice Department’s 2024 antitrust suit against Live Nation accused the company of depriving music fans in the US of “ticketing innovation” and forcing them to “use outdated technology while paying more for tickets than fans in other countries.”
The Journal reported Sunday that most of the states that joined the antitrust action against Live Nation, “including those controlled by Republicans, viewed the settlement as so favorable to the company that they refused to join it and continued to trial.”
“In April, a jury found Live Nation illegally monopolized the ticketing market for major concerts in the US,” the Journal noted. “The plaintiff states have asked the judge to break up the company.”
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