Latest news with #GailSlater
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Woman Who Can Make or Break Trump's Big Tech Crackdown
'I can't tell you what joy this gathering is bringing to me,' says Gail Slater. It is early April, three weeks into Slater's new job as assistant attorney general for antitrust, President Donald Trump's top cop on corporate monopolies. She has convened a forum at the Department of Justice's hulking headquarters aimed at combatting the scourge of 'Big-Tech censorship,' aided by a panel of whom Slater describes as 'several of our most important MAGA influencers.' She singles out one of those influencers. 'As the great Stephen K. Bannon would say to his audience,' she says of the former Trump adviser, 'it's time for action, action, action.' Slater passes the mic to Brendan Carr, Federal Communications Commission chair, who talks about using the tools of government to 'smash the censorship cartel.' 'Thank you, Brother Carr,' she says. She kicks it over to Andrew Ferguson, the combative new chair of the Federal Trade Commission, who rails against the concentrated power that allows 'the truly terrifying Silicon Valley elites' to censor speech. 'I often hear the criticism that what I'm describing is not a, quote, traditional concern of antitrust, end quote,' says Ferguson. 'Yes, it is, yes, it is. Of course it is.' 'That's another amen from me,' Slater says. It is a scene that until recently would have been unheard of for a mostly Republican crowd in Washington. Until Trump, Republicans largely embraced a light-touch approach to applying the country's antitrust laws — a tendency seen as part and parcel of the party's generally more business-friendly stances when compared to those of the Democrats. 'When it comes to antitrust,' went one Washington Post headline from 2006, when the last pre-Trump Republican, George W. Bush, was president, 'Washington is antibust.' Trump himself showed limited interest in aggressive antitrust against the major tech companies until near the end of his first term, when the DOJ filed a case against Google over the multibillion-dollar company allegedly unfairly competing in the search market just three months before he left office. But that's all shifting now, and Slater's own arc is one window into how it all changed for many other conservatives. Slater is a longtime Republican who throughout her legal and lobbying career has been known both as a by-the-book enforcer and bipartisan bridge-builder, according to interviews with nearly two dozen people who know her. But her long-standing disdain for the abuses of monopoly power has positioned her to be the leader of the surging MAGA antitrust movement's legal agenda, overseeing cases that include a pair of lawsuits against Google and another against Apple. She will also serve as an ally to Ferguson as his FTC sues Facebook-parent Meta over its purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp. Slater, who declined to comment for this story, made it clear at the forum on 'censorship' that she is an adherent to the belief oft-heard among the MAGA faithful that America's trillion-dollar tech companies have used their enormous stature to strangle personal freedoms of people whose politics they don't like. Trump is arguably among this group. 'Big Tech has run wild for years,' said Trump on his own Truth Social network in December in a post announcing Slater's nomination, shortly after personally interviewing her at Mar-a-Lago, according to a person with knowledge of their meeting. This person was granted anonymity to discuss transition meetings with Trump. But to critics, including Washington's many tech-industry lobbyists and allies, Trump is more motivated by his own personal grudges against tech companies that he thinks have wronged him — like when, near the tail end of his first term, he issued an executive order attempting to weaken online platforms' liability protections just days after X, then Twitter, attached warning labels to a pair of Trump's tweets. The company condemned the presidential action as 'reactionary and politicized.' All this sets up a very difficult task for Slater. To deliver on Trump's mandate for her in this role — much of which is also the goal of a growing part of the right and many advocates on the left — of checking Silicon Valley's power, Slater will have to develop and persuade judges of legal arguments against that concentration of that power. And crucially, she will have to do that while ensuring her arguments in court are perceived as separate from Trump's personal grievances toward tech companies. Because the easiest way to lose an antitrust case, say experts in the field, is to give a judge the impression a case is mere political retribution and not a dispassionate application of the law. Slater allies dismiss the worries. 'Claims about the politicization of antitrust enforcement are evergreen,' says Roger Alford, Slater's second-in-command at DOJ. 'In recent Republican and Democratic administrations, defendants alleged political enforcement in the press, but lost each time they brought those allegations to court.' Others are not so sure. Many have pointed to the possibility that Trump could easily go on X or Truth Social, take shots at tech companies and blow Slater's chances in court. 'I think a big challenge for Gail is, how impulsive will the president be?' says William Kovacic, a former chairman of the FTC, appointed by then-President George W. Bush and who says he's heartened to have Slater — with whom he worked at the FTC more than a decade ago — in her new post. 'You can't say, 'My god, shut up,' because then you're fired. So you cross your fingers and hope you're not a target.' A career attorney, Slater has typically been relatively mum about her worldview or legal philosophy — until her confirmation hearing in February and the public speaking events of early April, at least — but the Irish-born American has been a Republican since coming to the United States, according to several of her colleagues from her early days in Washington. In a recent speech at Notre Dame University's law school, Slater expanded on her belief that ''America First' antitrust empowers America's forgotten men and women to shape their own economic destinies in a free market.' What's more, said Slater, believing in aggressive enforcement of the antitrust laws on the books 'is a deeply conservative position, and there is nothing radical about it.' Over the course of her career, one can see her antitrust beliefs hardening as she watched tech companies' power growing and other institutions failing to check them. Born in early 1970s Dublin, Slater (nee Conlon) studied law at University College Dublin and competition policy at Oxford, moved to the United States in the early 2000s and in 2004, she went to work at the FTC's competition bureau. While there, she developed a reputation as a rare welcoming ear for those trying to make the case that Silicon Valley was growing too fast and some companies' monopolistic tendencies needed to be reined in. But at the time, the Internet was largely seen as a force for good, and in 2014, Slater joined its first real lobbying group, dedicated largely to preserving that lack of government oversight. That portfolio would soon turn controversial, though, as the tech industry's fortunes shifted. In the wake of the 2016 election, Republicans and Democrats alike had grown alarmed at the ability of online platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter to shape election narratives. Amid that burgeoning 'techlash,' there was also bipartisan interest in combatting the use of online platforms in sex trafficking. In 2017, Slater found herself in an uncomfortable position: testifying on Internet Association members' behalf against a bill aimed at combatting sex trafficking by increasing platforms' liability for what users post. Speaking later about the episode on a conference panel, she'd sarcastically refer to the episode as a 'deep personal joy,' saying she saw it as symptomatic of Silicon Valley's 'foot dragging' when it came to dealing with Washington's increased scrutiny. People close to the group, who were granted anonymity to discuss its inner workings, say Slater was put off by the sex-trafficking episode and the Internet Association's management, and in 2018, she left the organization. Slater immediately joined the Trump White House, serving as a special assistant to the president for technology, telecommunications and cyberspace policy on the National Economic Council. There, she worked primarily on accelerating the deployment of high-speed wireless technologies in a race against China, a push inside the administration that generated robust conversation about the tech sector's obligations to promote national interests. 'I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible,' posted Trump on X, then Twitter, at the time, 'American companies must step up their efforts.' During Slater's time at the White House, Trump often lashed out at powerful companies he felt had wronged him, including, critics said, by using antitrust powers. During his first term, the DOJ antitrust division tried unsuccessfully to block an $85 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner, an effort that was widely interpreted as motivated at least in part by Trump's animus towards CNN. Time Warner owned the network that Trump had branded, with others in media, 'the enemy of the American people!' over its coverage of him and others on the right. She left after 16 months. It was after Slater's time in the White House that she started to more consistently take the other side against tech companies. By 2019, she was back in the private sector, working as senior vice president for policy and strategy at Fox Corporation, a frequent antagonist to Facebook and Google, pushing policymakers and law enforcers to challenge the power of what founder Rupert Murdoch has called 'Big Digital.' While Slater mostly focused on issues like data privacy and online copyright, the move was taken by some as a slap at her old allies from her Internet trade association days. The pandemic and 2020 presidential campaign supercharged the growing conservative movement against tech companies. Many on the right accused social media platforms of smothering speech ranging from stories detailing the misdoings of Biden's family members to scrutiny of Covid vaccine efficacy. Figures like Republican Sens. Josh Hawley, Mike Lee and Chuck Grassley and then-Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz and Ken Buck led the charge with investigations and legislation in Congress. It was around this time when Slater's views on free speech and antitrust started to come together. Slater had previously not spoken in great detail publicly about ideas on free speech and antitrust, but they emerged during her confirmation testimony in February. Slater said that she worried that, with only a handful of big platforms online, 'someone can be disappeared from the Internet quite easily,' a reference to complaints from the right that the Biden administration pressured social media companies to suppress posts, including those on Covid-19 vaccines and the Hunter Biden laptop saga, it found objectionable. 'In markets that are highly concentrated,' she said, 'conservative viewpoints or anybody's viewpoint can be quickly throttled or suppressed when there is market power on back of that.' 'Censorship,' Alford, Slater's deputy, tells me, 'is the downstream manifestation of monopoly power.' These arguments align Slater with an emerging school of antitrust thought, increasingly popular on the right, that online platforms only feel free to stifle speech because, through unfair means, they've destroyed their competitors. Others have made attempts to name this new doctrine. 'MAGA Antitrust,' Ferguson has called it. Slater and others of late have come to call it 'America First Antitrust.' But speaking earlier the same day as the 'censorship' panel at a conference in downtown Washington D.C. put on by the tech incubator Y Combinator, Slater had another idea for a name. She said it was inspired by the notion of crafting an economy that works for everyday Americans. 'I'm also quite partial,' said Slater, 'to 'Hillbilly Antitrust,'' defining the approach as 'giving American citizens a seat at the table' in antitrust enforcement, which has long skewed, she argued, towards the interests of big business. At the 'censorship' panel in early April, she also summed up her thoughts on the political stakes of antitrust work. 'The late, great Andrew Breitbart used to talk about how our politics are downstream from our culture,' Slater said at the event, citing the conservative media figure who died in 2012. Slater took it a step further: 'In the past decade or so, we've realized that our culture is hugely downstream of technology.' One of her recent book recommendations, says Joel Thayer, an ally and fellow antitrust lawyer, is The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, a work by former CIA analyst Martin Gurri that details how Trump and other modern political figures have come to power by riding the wave of mass digital communications. Thayer said she recommended it because Slater, like Gurri, is interested in how tech shapes society. Gurri is a free-speech advocate who thinks large tech platforms have silenced dissenting voices. In 2022, Slater would return to antitrust work and go head-to-head with many of the Internet Association's members, whose interests she had once defended. She joined the streaming service Roku as a vice president, pushing for antitrust legislation opposed by the biggest online platforms. That bill failed in Congress. The loss solidified a belief among those eager to check the power of tech companies that Congress wasn't up to grappling with the nature of competition in the digital age. The remaining hope: American antitrust agencies — the FTC and antitrust division of the Justice Department. At the forefront of that push on the right was Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance. Though just a freshman legislator, the Hillbilly Elegy author had a national profile and was attempting to turn his Senate office into something of a think tank for an economic populism that included rethinking the assumptions baked into the modern practice of antitrust. At the time, Vance was arguing that, as a general matter, low prices should no longer be treated as a pass to avoid antitrust scrutiny. 'Long overdue, but it's time to break Google up,' Vance wrote in a post on X in February 2024, arguing that the company had 'monopolistic control of information in our society' and was 'a threat to democracy.' That same month, Slater signed on to Vance's office as an economic policy adviser. Five months later, Trump picked Vance as his vice-presidential running mate, and Trump's team turned to Slater. She sailed through her Senate confirmation, 78 to 19. To those eager for DOJ antitrust cases to include ones against tech giants, Slater was their next great hope. Luther Lowe is a former Yelp official who tried to get antitrust enforcers in both the United States and abroad to take action against Google in that role and is now with Y Combinator. After Slater's nomination, he said he was pleased with the Slater pick, in part because of what he sees as her early openness to constraining Google. 'I'm a Democrat,' says Lowe, 'but I could not be happier in terms of somebody who was on the right side of history now [being] in a place of power.' Some on the right are betting that Slater can bring both sides together, too. 'We're in an uneasy coalition,' Bannon said to me at the event held by Y Combinator held just before the DOJ panel, gesturing towards Biden-era FTC Chair Lina Khan, who had joined our conversation. 'Gail Slater's key to that.' Slater took office a full six months before her counterpart in the first Trump administration, taken by many observers as a signal that Trump is more eager, this time around, to put his stamp on his administration's antitrust project. Slater doesn't start with a fresh slate, and so it remains to be seen if she will advance novel legal arguments in the cases she launches herself rather than inheriting. For now, though, she's taken over a bevy of high-profile cases, including the one against Apple for allegedly using tricks to keep customers from switching to competitors' products, like unnecessarily blurring videos sent from Android devices. There are also cases against plaintiffs ranging from Visa (blocking rivals in the debit-card market) to Live Nation and Ticketmaster (inflating ticket prices) to the property management platform RealPage (algorithmic price-fixing). But arguably the biggest items on her docket: a pair of cases against Google. The further along of the two began under the first Trump administration and applies the Sherman Act's little-used-of-late provision making monopolies illegal. In August, a federal judge decided in favor of the Justice Department and dozens of state attorneys general in the case: 'Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.' The question now: What to do about it? In November, the Biden-era antitrust division asked the judge in the case to break Google up, including by forcing it to divest its Chrome browser. Google recoiled, calling it evidence of a 'radical interventionist agenda.' But in early March, the antitrust division's Trump-appointed acting chief largely re-upped the break-up request. The trial over Google's penalty for behaving as a monopolist began before a federal judge in late April, the first real test of Slater's ability to win cases in court. Closing arguments in that trial are scheduled for the end of May, and the judge is expected to issue a decision in August. 'In a time of political division in our nation, the case against Google brings everyone together,' Slater said, speaking outside the courthouse before opening arguments. 'Nothing less than the future of the Internet is at stake.' Slater's task is to argue that she is pursuing cases like the one against Google because a corporation has acted as an abusive monopoly — perpetuating its dominance of the search market through unfair means, which in the Google search case involves paying mobile phone makers to install Google by default. In the Google case, Slater's team has argued that Google drives a 'vicious cycle,' in which it spends heavily to make its own search engine the default, then uses the vastly greater volume of data it generates to improve itself and edge out future competition. A successful case also requires persuading skeptical judges that taking the bold step of blocking a deal or splitting apart a corporation is the required outcome of an impartial application of the law. Slater's biggest challenge could be her boss, who has a seemingly reflexive desire to offer running commentary on legal matters facing his presidency, even if it ends up harming his own policy goals. 'The pitch you're making to the court,' says William Kovacic, the one-time FTC chair, 'is, 'you can trust us because we're experts using good technical judgment. We're using our best professional judgment.' Judges, says Kovacic, 'are not going to defer to extortion, to political pressure.' 'If judges think that your case is simply the consequence of political pressure, you really have to fight for your life,' he says. If Trump regularly speaks out about what he sees as tech abuses targeted specifically at him, as he did during his first presidency — 'Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED,' he tweeted in the summer of 2018 — it may well undercut Slater's carefully crafted arguments in court that the administration's antitrust lawsuits have nothing to do with politics. That is what happened during Trump's first term when organizations sued over his administration's executive orders banning travel from some majority-Muslim countries. Judges ruled against him on one iteration of the travel ban and specifically cited the president's tweets, which undermined his own lawyers' arguments. Slater herself has said it won't be difficult to avoid the president's meddling. In follow-up questions after the confirmation hearing, Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, asked Slater how she would respond if Trump asked her to bring an enforcement action against a firm out of retaliation, his political interests or personal grudge. 'I do not expect that President Trump would make such a request,' Slater responded. I asked Bannon about this. 'President Trump tends to speak about matters before the court,' I say. 'Does that complicate things when it comes to antitrust, where judges can be wary of politicization?' 'The reality is, you're not going to change it,' Bannon says. He points out that it's 'Liberation Day,' or the day that Trump is set to announce tariffs that will upend global trade. And yet, hours out from revealing the plan, says Bannon, 'I'm not sure they've made a final decision' on what the tariffs would look like. Same goes, says Bannon, for whatever will end up being Trump's role in his administration's antitrust agenda. 'He's got his house style,' says Bannon. 'You just have to deal with it.'
09-05-2025
- Business
Bipartisan pair of senators applaud DOJ investigation into egg producers
A bipartisan pair of senators applauded the Justice Department's ongoing investigation into major egg producers over rising prices and called on the department to look even further into the issue in a letter to Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater late Thursday evening. "We write to express support for the Department of Justice's reported investigation into anticompetitive practices in the U.S. egg industry," Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Jim Banks wrote. "As you are aware, the sustained increase in egg prices has placed a significant financial strain on American families, particularly workingclass households. While egg producers and trade associations point to recent avian flu outbreaks as the cause of high prices, we are concerned that record high egg prices reflect noncompetitive behavior among large producers." ABC News reported in March that the Department of Justice was in the early stages of investigating major egg producers over soaring egg prices. Sources told ABC News at the time that department investigators were looking into whether the major egg companies were sharing information about supply and pricing, possibly contributing to price increases. The average retail price of a dozen eggs climbed from $4.95 in January to $6.22 in March, the most recent month for which data is available, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That amounts to a 25% increase in consumer cost. By contrast, wholesale prices of eggs are falling. The average price of a dozen large white eggs was $3.69 over the week ending May 3, the most recent week available, according to Department of Agriculture data. Over the week ending Jan. 17 -- the last week of data before Trump took office -- the average price of a dozen large white eggs stood at $6.14, data showed. That's a nearly 40% decline. Egg producers, including the industry's trade association, have said that the hike in consumer egg costs is due to the avian flu. But in their letter, the senators cast doubt on this claim and encourage the Department of Justice to continue its efforts to determine whether "noncompetitive behavior among large producers" could be to blame. "Egg prices began to drop from their record peaks only after the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigation into whether large egg producers had engaged in anticompetitive practices to raise egg prices or restrict egg supply," Banks and Warren write. "Large egg producers and trade associations have previously been found liable for price fixing. Given this history, we urge DOJ to thoroughly review whether recent trends in egg prices reflect impermissible coordination among egg producers and trade associations." In a statement to ABC News, Warren said Americans deserve answers over the cause of rising cost of eggs at the grocery store. "While rising egg prices are hurting working families, giant egg producers are raking in record profits. Americans deserve to know if those sky-high prices are the result of out-of-control corporate greed. We're pressing the Justice Department to get answers," Warren said. Banks said the egg industry is "long overdue" for an antitrust investigation. "America's egg industry has been controlled by a handful of companies for years, and it's long overdue for an antitrust investigation to bring down prices and create more competition," Banks said. "I fully support the Department of Justice's probe into whether these companies have exploited the avian flu outbreak to manipulate prices.' The ballooning cost of eggs was an ongoing political flashpoint during the 2024 presidential race. Then-candidate Donald Trump made lowering the cost of groceries a cornerstone of his campaign. Since returning to the Oval Office, he's often spoken about egg prices and in recent days, he's touted repeatedly that egg prices are lower because of his leadership. "Gas is down, gasoline is down, energy is down, groceries are down, eggs are down. Eggs, thank you very much. But eggs are down," Trump said during remarks in the Oval office on Thursday. Warren and Banks say the cost of eggs continues to be a burden on American families. "The sustained increase in egg prices has placed a significant financial strain on American families, particularly workingclass households," they write. "Eggs have long been an affordable staple in Americans' diets. Yet, the cost of eggs reached an unprecedented high this year." The senators said that they "support" the DOJ investigation into the behavior of egg producers and urged the agency to consider whether a "precipitous drop" in egg prices just "days" after news of the investigation broke suggest that egg producers had conspired to artificially inflate prices. They also seek additional information from DOJ by mid-May about whether egg prices can be reasonably explained by bird flu, what sort of profit increases were seen by large egg producers, and whether DOJ analysis shows a sudden price decrease in eggs following the announcement of its investigation.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DOJ And FTC Take Public Comments In Inquiry Of Live Concert Ticketing Market
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have launched a public comment period in their inquiry into unfair and uncompetitive practices in ticketing in the live concert and event business. Public comments are being taken online, with a deadline of July 6. More from Deadline Donald Trump signed an executive order in March, ombating Unfair Practices in the Live Entertainment Market, that directed that the DOJ and the FTC ensured 'that competition laws are appropriately enforced in the concert and entertainment industry.' The executive order also directed the FTC to ensure enforcement of the Better Online Tickets Sales Act, which restricts the resale of tickets that were purchased via bots. The DOJ and the FTC, as well as the secretary of the treasury, were directed to submit recommendations on potential regulation and legislation. 'Competitive live entertainment markets should deliver value to artists and fans alike,' Gail Slater, who heads the DOJ's Antitrust Division. 'We will continue to closely examine this market and look for opportunities where vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws can lead to increased competition that makes tickets more affordable for fans while offering fairer compensation for artists.' FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said, 'Many Americans feel like they are being priced out of live entertainment by scalpers, bots, and other unfair and deceptive practices.' The DOJ and state attorneys general filed suit last year against Live Nation-Ticketmaster, alleging that the company has a monopoly in live entertainment that has thwarted competition. In response, Live Nation issued called the lawsuit allegations 'baseless' and said, 'Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment, such as the fact that the bulk of service fees go to venues, and that competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster's market share and profit margin.' Best of Deadline Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DOJ And FTC Take Public Comments In Inquiry Of Live Concert Ticketing Market
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have launched a public comment period in their inquiry into unfair and uncompetitive practices in ticketing in the live concert and event business. Public comments are being taken online, with a deadline of July 6. More from Deadline Donald Trump signed an executive order in March, ombating Unfair Practices in the Live Entertainment Market, that directed that the DOJ and the FTC ensured 'that competition laws are appropriately enforced in the concert and entertainment industry.' The executive order also directed the FTC to ensure enforcement of the Better Online Tickets Sales Act, which restricts the resale of tickets that were purchased via bots. The DOJ and the FTC, as well as the secretary of the treasury, were directed to submit recommendations on potential regulation and legislation. 'Competitive live entertainment markets should deliver value to artists and fans alike,' Gail Slater, who heads the DOJ's Antitrust Division. 'We will continue to closely examine this market and look for opportunities where vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws can lead to increased competition that makes tickets more affordable for fans while offering fairer compensation for artists.' FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said, 'Many Americans feel like they are being priced out of live entertainment by scalpers, bots, and other unfair and deceptive practices.' The DOJ and state attorneys general filed suit last year against Live Nation-Ticketmaster, alleging that the company has a monopoly in live entertainment that has thwarted competition. In response, Live Nation issued called the lawsuit allegations 'baseless' and said, 'Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment, such as the fact that the bulk of service fees go to venues, and that competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster's market share and profit margin.' Best of Deadline Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Irish Times
03-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
How Live Nation calls the tune for the live music industry
In 2017, the owners of a US concert venue held a meeting Ticketmaster about securing a ticketing partner. They were surprised to be joined by a promoter from Live Nation, its massive US events owner. In the meeting, the Live Nation executive said explicitly that if the venue didn't choose Ticketmaster, it would not stage events there. And when the venue eventually did choose a rival ticketer, Live Nation allegedly made good on its threat. Rather than getting the three or four shows a year expected, the venue instead received precisely zero. The case was one of a number uncovered by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in 2019 that allegedly showed Live Nation using its position in concert promotion to pressure venues to use its Ticketmaster subsidiary. The probe into the 15-year-old merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster led to an agreement to extend and amend decrees around the 2010 deal. But the DoJ has found that it needs to step in again. This time, the agency argues that the only remedy will be to reverse the merger entirely, accusing the entertainment giant of a level of control over the US live events industry that has cost fans, artists, rival promoters and venue operators. READ MORE 'It's a shakedown,' says Jonathan Kanter, who until December was assistant attorney-general for the antitrust division of the DoJ. He has since been replaced by Gail Slater, an antitrust veteran and economic adviser to vice-president JD Vance. 'This is a deliberate plan by Live Nation to take a core monopoly in ticketing and flank it with other powerful businesses to create a self-protecting ecosystem,' adds Kanter. 'I have never seen a more popular antitrust case in my 25-year career. Fans are unhappy, venues are unhappy, and the market is stagnant.' The investigation has reinforced fears among competitors in the industry after authorities allowed the world's largest live events business to buy the world's largest ticket company in 2010. Most music and sports fans have little idea of how much of their night out is in the hands of Live Nation. But if the DoJ is right then they will have paid the price in higher fees and ticket prices, and in the choice of artists at their local venues. The fact that it took Oasis and Taylor Swift to get the attention of regulators worldwide is not lost on rivals in the industry who have long complained about the extent of Live Nation's interests in the market. But in part prompted by skyrocketing ticket prices – not least for the Mancunian brothers' reunion and Swift's 2023-24 Eras tour – other competition authorities and lawmakers have started scrutinising the live events market more closely. 100 days of Trump: 'It's like The Karate Kid, tax on, tax off, tariffs on, tariffs off' Listen | 42:49 British MP Liam Byrne, chair of the UK's business and trade select committee, said that Live Nation appears to have 'more arms than an octopus'. 'One part of Live Nation could be dictating the price to another part of Live Nation,' he said at a committee hearing in February. 'That sounds like a conspiracy.' Andrew Parsons, boss of Ticketmaster's UK business, told MPs that Live Nation had 'clear divides between how we operate on a daily basis', and that the UK is 'an incredibly competitive [ticketing] market'. Ticket prices were set by event organisers, he said, not Ticketmaster. In the US, the DoJ case has bipartisan backing – but rivals and antitrust campaigners are concerned that it may not have the same support from the new administration. What happens with Live Nation may set the tone for how the Trump White House approaches competition policy over the next four years. 'This has the potential to be the largest and most important antitrust case in the US for a long time,' says Diana Moss, vice-president and director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute. 'We have a very traditional monopoly, but also a very modern digital monopoly.' Live Nation has rejected the DoJ allegations. It accused the previous government of ignoring 'everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices, from increasing production costs to artist popularity, to 24/7 online ticket scalping that reveals the public's willingness to pay far more than primary tickets cost'. Liam Gallagher (left) and Noel Gallagher of Oasis. it was use of flexible pricing for their reunion gigs that provoked controversy and fresh regulatory scrutiny in the UK. The company said that it disagreed with the DoJ's take on the 2017 incident with the US concert venue, but 'the more important point is that there have been no credible allegations of anything like that happening in recent years'. Dan Wall, executive vice-president of corporate and regulatory affairs for Live Nation, describes the DoJ case as 'a hodgepodge of things' that does not amount to a violation of the merger agreement. 'There isn't any one thing that they can hang their hat on,' he says. Since its takeover of Ticketmaster, Live Nation has built an enormous entertainment machine straddling large parts of the live events ecosystem, according to the DoJ and rivals, some of whom declined to be identified given their concerns over the power that the company has in the industry. Across the world, Live Nation had exclusive booking rights for or has an equity interest in 394 venues and 137 festivals in 2024, according to company filings. It promoted more than 54,000 live music and other events involving 11,000 artists. In North America, the DoJ says Live Nation controls more than 265 concert venues, including more than 60 of the top 100 US amphitheatres, and directly manages more than 400 musical artists. Its scale in the US has been replicated in markets such as the UK, where it has built up a network of subsidiaries, either wholly or partially owned, spanning venues and festivals (from Latitude to the Isle of Wight) and ticketing. The company is involved in the management of bands and promotion of events, driving revenues from advertising, sponsorship and upselling to VIP seats at its venues, parking, food and beverage and merchandise sales. The DoJ describes it as a 'live entertainment ecosystem' that works as 'a feedback loop that inflates its fees and revenue, all at the expense of fans'. Live Nation supplies services to venues such as security via Showsec in the UK, whose accounts show it is majority owned by the US group. Food and drink often means a payday for Live Nation: it owns stakes in suppliers such as US water brand Liquid Death, CVT Soft Serve ice cream and Owen's Craft Mixers, sold through its venues. One rival festival executive says that 'they go for it all'. Live Nation boss Michael Rapino has himself described the company strategy to investors as a 'flywheel', with the concerts at the core, aiming 'to get into ... high margin businesses and be competitive'. The term has been taken up by the DoJ in its allegations over a self-reinforcing model while rivals complain of a flywheel that spins ever faster to throw out money. Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation. Revenues have increased fourfold from the combined sales generated by the separate businesses pre-merger in 2010, and are double that from before the pandemic, as demand for events bounced back strongly from lockdowns in the US and UK. Shares hit an all-time high in February. Live Nation's supporters in the industry say it is taking the financial risk for events that are often not sold out and run at a loss to the benefit of artists, who typically receive the majority of all ticketing revenue. It is doing better because the market is doing better, they add. Others argue that this is part of the business model: its power in the music industry results in higher margin operations that allow it to cross-subsidise lower margin businesses elsewhere. So through less profitable venue control, Live Nation can win deals to promote artist tours and generate high margin sponsorship and advertising revenues. The DoJ argues that control of the venue and the promotion of the artists can then help secure the ticket sales mandate. Given Live Nation-Ticketmaster's power in concert promotions, 'every live concert venue knows choosing another promoter or ticketer comes with a risk of ... losing concerts, revenue, and fans', it said. 'Live Nation's monopoly power in primary ticketing for major concert venues in the US is demonstrated by its ability to control prices and/or exclude competition.' In the US, Ticketmaster's exclusive agreements cover more than 75 per cent of concert ticket sales at major venues, the DoJ said. Wall says any accusation of dominance in venue ownership is 'totally fictitious'. The model of combining ticketing and venue operation is also used by rivals such as AEG and CTS Eventim, he points out, with the latter leading in European event promotions and ticket sales. Live Nation operates just 4 per cent of music venues in the US, it said, and the majority of shows it promotes take place in venues owned by other companies. Every amphitheatre in the Live Nation portfolio 'competes with a local arena or a local stadium, or maybe a festival', Wall adds. In 2023, The Cure's Robert Smith said that he was 'as sickened as you all are' after tickets for a US tour that the band had tried to make affordable were laden with fees. When Oasis announced reunion gigs last year, few in the industry were surprised to see Live Nation listed as a co-promoter and Ticketmaster among the companies handling the sales. But it was the use of flexible pricing that provoked controversy and fresh regulatory scrutiny in the UK. Although Ticketmaster says it does not set the ticket price, the UK competition regulator last month warned that it may have breached consumer protection laws by labelling some seated tickets for Oasis as 'platinum' and selling them for near 2.5 times the price of equivalent standard tickets. These tickets did not offer any additional benefits and were often located in the same area of the stadium, the Competition and Markets Authority found, with other tickets hiked without warning as soon as lower priced ones had sold out. Ticketmaster said in response that it strived 'to provide the best ticketing platform through a simple, transparent and consumer-friendly experience'. For the DoJ, so-called dynamic ticketing practices where prices change depending on demand are part of the matrix of additional fees that charge profits for Live Nation 'often with little visibility offered to the fan buying the ticket'. While the company's venues and promotion business, which makes up the majority of revenues, generates margins in the low single digits, those in its ticketing business are in the high 30s and sponsorship in the 60s. Artists and executives also complain about them. In 2023, The Cure's Robert Smith said that he was 'as sickened as you all are' after tickets for a US tour that the band had tried to make affordable were laden with fees that in some cases doubled the price. Wall describes this now as 'a mistake ... an oversight now being used by people to suggest that it was somehow the norm'. Ticketmaster refunded some of its fees. In Ireland, the so-called inside fee has become a common practice by Ticketmaster to generate more revenues, according to an executive from a booking agent, who declined to be named. The company had a market share of up to 90 per cent in the country, according to an investigation by the Irish Competition and Consumer Protection Commission in 2020. The cost of a ticket for the booking agent's acts in a Dublin venue – used as the source of the artist's cut – was €22.00, but the ticket price displayed on Ticketmaster was €25.00, on top of which €3.10 service fee was applied. This meant €6.10 of charges on a €22.00 ticket, or a 28 per cent increase, the booking agent says. 'In some markets, the service fee may be an inside commission and an above face value,' says Tim Chambers, a former Ticketmaster and Live Nation senior executive who now works as an M&A consultant in the ticketing industry. Live Nation said that it and Ticketmaster 'have large market shares because artists and venues prefer [our] services over others. There is nothing nefarious about that.' It also said Ticketmaster's market share and profit margins have declined since the US merger. Wall reiterates that artists and their management, not Ticketmaster, are responsible for setting ticket prices and deciding whether to use dynamic pricing and that Ticketmaster only retained 'a modest portion' of fees and service charge – which are no higher than rivals. 'The 'flywheel' is creating 8 per cent [overall] margins. That's not a monopoly profit,' he says. 'The defining feature of a monopolist is monopoly profits derived from monopoly pricing ... Live Nation in no way fits the profile.' The question now is not just whether the DoJ can make its case, but whether the new administration has the same appetite to challenge the country's most successful events operator as the last. In March this year, a New York court refused Live Nation's attempt to exclude the DoJ's claim that it coerces artists into using its concert promotion services if they want to perform at its large amphitheatres. Live Nation had argued that it is rival concert promoters who rent the venues, not the artists themselves. The judge did not agree. Live Nation has declared itself a victim of the Biden administration and its 'populist urge that simply rejects how antitrust law works. Some call this 'anti-monopoly', but in reality it is just anti-business.' Its lobbying efforts have increased in recent years, with more than $2 million (€1.7 million) spent in 2023 and 2024 by the parent company – almost twice as much as the years previously. Live Nation said that it was 'not lobbying to protect margins – in fact, many of the reforms we support, like giving artists the ability to cap resale, could actually reduce profits'. Donald Trump and musician Kid Rock. Photograph: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC But Joe Biden's presidential successor also clearly believes high ticket prices are a concern. Earlier this year, Donald Trump signed an executive order to crack down on touts buying up tickets and selling at higher prices on the secondary market. 'I didn't know too much about it, but I checked it out, and this is a big problem,' said the president, revealing the order alongside musician Kid Rock in the Oval Office. Live Nation says it supports the order. The DoJ found that Ticketmaster accounted for nearly a third of ticket resales in 2022, although critics of the company are concerned that the focus on resales could detract from the focus on the primary sale of tickets. Analysts are also not convinced that the DoJ will have enough, not just to prove a dominant position, but to also demonstrate that this has been used for anticompetitive practices. A note from JPMorgan last year said that there was 'a real possibility that [Live Nation] comes out of this a winner'. Live Nation CFO Joe Berchtold said on a recent earnings call the company was 'hopeful that we'll see a return to the more traditional antitrust approach, where the agencies have generally tried to find ways to solve problems with targeted remedies that minimise government intervention in the marketplace'. He added that 'at least some parts of the case reflect a much more interventionist philosophy than you'd expect from a Republican administration'. But many in the industry remain confident that the DoJ's case will continue, given its bipartisan support in Congress and from dozens of US states. Brian Hess, of the US non-profit group the Sports Fans Coalition, which advocates for consumer rights, notes that Kanter's replacement at the agency, Slater, 'is a pretty strong advocate of antitrust enforcement'. He points to an assertive stance against Big Tech, and argues that Ticketmaster too 'is just a very big tech company that happens to sell tickets. There is no way to be a fan of anything in this country and not have to deal with the company.' – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
