Will the Live Nation DOJ settlement reshape ticket sales?
The Excerpt
USA TODAY
4.1 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Buying concert tickets already means high fees and limited choices. Add to that the headache of frustrating presales. So just how much does a proposed Department of Justice settlement with Live Nation and Ticketmaster loosen their grip on the market? Will the current system remain largely unchanged, or will fans actually notice a difference at checkout? Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division Doha Mekki joins USA TODAY’s The Excerpt to discuss the split over the proposed settlement in the antitrust case brought by the Biden administration’s DOJ, which ultimately included more than 40 states.
Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com.
Episode transcript available here.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Fine concert tickets already means high fees and limited choices, and you can add to that the headache of frustrating pre-sells. |
| 0:12.4 | So how much does a proposed Department of Justice settlement with Live Nation and Ticketmaster loosen their grip on the market? |
| 0:19.7 | Will the current system remain largely unchanged? |
| 0:22.8 | Will fans actually notice a difference when they check out? |
| 0:30.0 | Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excert. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, March 27, |
| 0:36.7 | 2026. Joining me to discuss the split over the settlement |
| 0:40.9 | of the antitrust case brought by the Biden DOJ, which ultimately included over 40 states, |
| 0:47.2 | as former acting assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, |
| 0:52.9 | Doha Mecki. It's nice to have you here, Doha. |
| 0:55.7 | Thank you so much for having me. Before we dive into the terms of the recent settlement, can you |
| 1:01.6 | walk me through how we got here? Anyone who's bought tickets for a live show is likely familiar |
| 1:08.0 | with Ticketmaster, but lay out for me how Live Nation and Ticketmaster |
| 1:12.8 | operate. So going way back to 2004, the Justice Department alongside 40 state attorneys |
| 1:21.2 | general filed a sweeping monopolization lawsuit that alleged a number of things. But really the core of it was that Live |
| 1:30.3 | Nation had a stranglehold over the live music ecosystem. And the center of the live music |
| 1:37.8 | ecosystem was that Live Nation really had four or five parts of its business that it used to really have a lot of bottlenecks |
| 1:48.3 | and choke points over the music experience that fans and artists and everyone in between |
| 1:55.8 | had in this industry. And so, for example, it promotes tours. We allege that it controls about 60% of concert promotions at major concert venues. It owns or controls a number of venues, hundreds in fact, across North America. It owns amphitheaters. More than 60 of the top 100 amphitheaters in the United States. |
| 2:19.3 | It owns a number of arenas. |
| 2:21.1 | It even makes money advertising inside the venues that it owns and operates. |
| 2:26.7 | It manages artists directly, more than 400 artists, we alleged in the complaint. |
| 2:31.2 | And most famously, the place where fans tend to interact with Live |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from USA TODAY, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of USA TODAY and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.