AEG and SeatGeek have each requested a federal choose to reject the antitrust settlement that will let Stay Nation hold Ticketmaster.
AEG competes with Stay Nation in live performance promotion and ticketing, and owns venues together with Crypto.com Enviornment in Los Angeles. SeatGeek competes with Ticketmaster in main and secondary ticketing.
AEG desires a court-ordered sale of Ticketmaster, and a ban on the long-term unique contracts Ticketmaster indicators with main live performance venues.
SeatGeek asks the courtroom to search out the settlement just isn’t within the public curiosity.
AEG filed alongside Messina Touring Group founder Louis Messina, who wrote that Stay Nation stopped returning his calls in 2024 and blocked his artists from utilizing him at its amphitheaters. Messina operates in partnership with AEG however says he runs his firm independently.
AEG’s and Messina’s feedback have been submitted to the US Division of Justice and docketed on Thursday (September 3), and may be learn in full right here and right here. SeatGeek’s landed on August 31.
The Tunney Act remark interval closed on September 4. Decide Arun Subramanian should determine whether or not the settlement serves the general public curiosity.
The Progressive Coverage Institute additionally urged rejection on September 3. Eighteen attorneys common representing 17 states and the District of Columbia – plaintiffs, not outdoors commenters – filed on September 4.
The DOJ should reply to all of the feedback and file them with the courtroom earlier than Subramanian guidelines on the proposed judgment.
Stay Nation settled with the DOJ in March, per week into trial, agreeing to divest 13 amphitheater reserving agreements, cap Ticketmaster’s service charges at 15% of face worth at Stay Nation amphitheaters, put aside USD $280 million for state damages claims, and lengthen its consent decree by eight years.
Most states refused it and pressed on. In April, a jury discovered Stay Nation and Ticketmaster had illegally monopolized the US ticketing and amphitheater markets.
AEG factors to the 2010 and 2020 consent decrees, which imposed guidelines on Stay Nation’s conduct quite than breaking the corporate up, and asks why an eight-year model ought to succeed “the place fifteen years of comparable restrictions failed.”
“The Proposed Decree differs from the prior failed decrees in type, not in substance,” its submitting states. “It leaves intact – certainly, it protects – Stay Nation’s anticompetitive flywheel: venues will proceed to join Ticketmaster unique contracts so they don’t lose priceless Stay Nation exhibits. The risk needn’t be spoken to be efficient.
“So long as Stay Nation controls the live shows venues want, venues will nonetheless choose Ticketmaster – not as a result of Ticketmaster wins on worth, service, or innovation, however as a result of venues can not afford the price of selecting an alternate like AXS or SeatGeek.”
“So long as Stay Nation controls the live shows venues want, venues will nonetheless choose Ticketmaster – not as a result of Ticketmaster wins on worth, service, or innovation, however as a result of venues can not afford the price of selecting an alternate like AXS or SeatGeek.”
AEG
Below the proposed judgment, Ticketmaster should let any main live performance venue beneath an unique contract use a rival market for one occasion in every year remaining on the contract.
Venues with a minimum of 4 years remaining should even be supplied the choice of transferring as much as 20% of their fee-bearing stock to a competitor, although Ticketmaster could minimize its funds to them professional rata.
AEG describes the primary as making use of solely to contracts with as much as 4 years left, and the second as a substitute for longer ones.
On that studying, it claims Ticketmaster retains roughly 85% of the market – about 6,500 of 7,500 occasions a yr at main live performance venues – with solely round 170 occasions opened to rivals.
Each firms assault the settlement’s “open distribution” system, beneath which rivals would plug into Ticketmaster’s back-end software program whereas, AEG says, Ticketmaster would hold charging its charges on these gross sales.
“In different phrases, the one ‘competitors’ the Proposed Decree seems to create is competitors to promote Ticketmaster tickets on Ticketmaster’s personal system,” AEG’s remark states. “However in fact that’s not competitors in any respect.
“… Put merely, the Proposed Decree doesn’t break Ticketmaster’s grip; it tightens it.”
AEG additionally argues the settlement is just too low-cost to discourage: “An $18 million cost and a $5 million penalty per violation won’t change Stay Nation’s incentives.”
That USD $18 million is separate from the USD $280 million fund: it covers funds to the six states that joined the settlement.
AEG places that cost at beneath 0.1% of Stay Nation’s annual income, which its submitting provides as greater than USD $25 billion in 2025.
“… Put merely, the Proposed Decree doesn’t break Ticketmaster’s grip; it tightens it.”
AEG
AEG additionally says the DOJ settled with out notifying its personal trial workforce – because the plaintiff states argued once they requested the courtroom in July to authorize discovery.
Messina, whose firm has promoted excursions for Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, submitted a separate touch upon promoter economics and amphitheaters.
“Stay Nation doesn’t make its cash by selling excursions and serving to artists. As an alternative, Stay Nation makes its cash from ticketing charges and sponsorships,” he wrote. “You possibly can have a look at their public monetary statements.
“Stay Nation doesn’t make its cash by selling excursions and serving to artists. As an alternative, Stay Nation makes its cash from ticketing charges and sponsorships.”
Louis Messina, Messina Touring Group
“Stay Nation makes virtually a billion {dollars} from ticketing charges yearly whereas in a few years they make little, if any cash of their touring enterprise.”
On his personal enterprise, Messina wrote: “However my association with Stay Nation resulted in 2024. I used to be making an attempt to route a number of excursions via Stay Nation amphitheaters, however Stay Nation stopped returning my calls.”
He says Stay Nation agreed to let The Lumineers play its amphitheaters “however provided that I used to be not concerned.” It started returning his calls once more in 2026, after the settlement was filed.
“Most artists, brokers, and managers are afraid of talking out in opposition to Stay Nation as a result of they might lose the whole lot if Stay Nation turns in opposition to them. Stay Nation already has turned in opposition to me. I’ve nothing to lose so I can inform it like it’s.”
SeatGeek’s remark activates one impediment: venues consider leaving Ticketmaster prices them Stay Nation exhibits.
“There isn’t any motive to consider that making an attempt the identical failed strategy a 3rd time will work, and each motive to consider that it’s going to not,” SeatGeek’s submitting states.
It says it has supplied “retaliation insurance coverage” to a minimum of eight main live performance venues, absorbing a number of the threat of misplaced Stay Nation exhibits, and paid the Florida Panthers practically USD $1 million beneath one such provision this yr.
SeatGeek says “just about all” of them stayed with Ticketmaster anyway, and that it’s the main ticketer at 5 venues it believes qualify as main live performance venues.
SeatGeek’s second argument is structural.
“By separating the idea of a back-end ticketing platform from the opposite facets of a consumer-facing market, the PFJ [the proposed judgment] purports to open up main ticketing,” the remark states. “However in actuality, the PFJ cements Ticketmaster’s place because the back-end foundational ticketing system for venues.”
SeatGeek’s verdict on the deal: “It is a feeble gesture masquerading as a critical resolution.”
In an announcement to Billboard, Stay Nation EVP of company and regulatory affairs Dan Wall mentioned the AEG and SeatGeek filings “advance their very own industrial pursuits, not these of artists, venues or followers,” and that “a lot of what they are saying misrepresents the settlement’s phrases.”
Wall added that “nothing in these filings adjustments our confidence that the courtroom will approve it.”
MBW has approached the DOJ for remark, and Stay Nation for additional remark.Music Enterprise Worldwide
