SeatGeek was close to a deal that would bring its ticketing business to the next level. The company was in negotiations with the Dallas Cowboys, aiming to take over first-party sales at its stadium. But there was one sticking point: “the concert issue.” The team feared that if it dropped SeatGeek’s rival Ticketmaster, Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation could pull concerts from the team’s stadium, damaging an important revenue stream.
That’s how SeatGeek CEO Jack Groetzinger remembers things. The deal was ultimately successful, resulting in a primary ticketing partnership that was announced in 2018. But for a while, Groetzinger recalled on the stand in front of a Manhattan jury Friday, “the concert issue was the one thing we just couldn’t get over, and seemed like it might tank the whole process.”
During the first days of the government’s six-week antitrust trial against Live Nation-Ticketmaster, retaliation — a charge Live Nation emphatically denies — has been a core theme. Many in the industry believed Live Nation’s promoters would withhold concerts from venues that didn’t use Ticketmaster, several witnesses testified. The real or perceived threat created such fear, witnesses alleged, that some major venues would decline to switch to what they viewed as a better ticketing product, so as not to earn Live Nation’s wrath. With a settlement reportedly imminent, changes may be on the way — but not the full breakup the government put on the table during trial. The dozens of individual states involved in the case, meanwhile, will need to decide whether to push ahead.
SeatGeek didn’t necessarily know Live Nation would strike back. But venues’ fear of losing its concerts was costing SeatGeek business, Groetzinger said. With the Cowboys deal appearing to go south, a SeatGeek employee suggested a bold idea: What if they offered retaliation insurance? The company could promise venues that if Live Nation passed them over for a concert, it would hand over enough money to cover the revenue they would have made.
The idea made Groetzinger “really uncomfortable,” he testified. SeatGeek would have to set aside a large sum of money for the insurance. Even if they never had to pay out, Groetzinger said, the company would need to make up for those funds elsewhere in the contract — in his words, “the venue gets a worse deal.” But SeatGeek’s board ultimately agreed to the idea, and it clinched the Cowboys deal. From that point on, offering retaliation insurance became an option of last resort. “It’s really scary, but if we feel that we have no choice, we’ll do it,” he said.
So far, two venues that signed up for retaliation insurance have claimed the provision was triggered — one was the Cowboys. In 2022, the team told SeatGeek they believed Live Nation passed over their stadium for a Coldplay concert. For the benefit of the relationship with SeatGeek, Groetzinger said, the Cowboys didn’t collect on the claim at the time.
The risks are even more pronounced with smaller arenas, where there are more options for artists and promoters to choose between, Groetzinger said.
Early in the week, the jury heard from two witnesses who were directly responsible for ticketing at arenas: the former CEO of Barclays Center owner BSE Global, John Abbamondi, and Mitch Helgerson, chief revenue officer for the Minnesota Wild hockey team. The Wild considered a SeatGeek offer, but Live Nation-Ticketmaster allegedly threatened to move its shows to the Target Center in nearby Minneapolis, an “almost catastrophic” (in Helgerson’s words) consequence even retaliation insurance wouldn’t fix. Barclays negotiations went better, and SeatGeek signed a seven-year deal in 2021. But quickly, everything fell apart.
SeatGeek made significant sacrifices to land Barclays. BSE calculated the arena could lose $20 million if Live Nation skipped over the arena, a number SeatGeek couldn’t afford to cover outright, so it offered the next best thing: $20 million of equity in its business. The deal would be “one of the least profitable deals that we signed,” Groetzinger said. “But we thought it was worth doing because this was going to be such a watershed moment for us.” In fact, the year after SeatGeek signed the deal, it was able to add three NFL stadiums and two arenas to its client list, he said.
But it quickly became clear that the number of Barclays concerts was “way below what we expected,” Groetzinger recalled. Abbamondi’s contract wasn’t renewed, and the arena began “complaining about things that either didn’t make sense or were really small.” Some were legitimate issues with SeatGeek’s platform that it worked to fix, but others were data entry issues created by BSE’s own box office staff, which Abbamondi also testified to. Groetzinger felt Barclays was creating a pretext to go back to Ticketmaster because it was frantic about losing Live Nation shows. The deal ended after 18 months. On cross-examination, Live Nation attorneys have suggested SeatGeek’s incompetence, not Live Nation’s alleged retaliation, caused the deal to disintegrate.
The more arenas SeatGeek failed to win over or lost, the harder it became to get new ones, Groetzinger said. SeatGeek has signed five arenas total to its primary ticketing business. “An arena worries about being skipped when they feel like they’re on an island,” Groetzinger said.
It’s bigger than Ticketmaster
The case is about more than just ticket sales. The government also alleges that Live Nation has monopoly power over the market for large amphitheaters in the US — outdoor venues popular with touring artists in the summer months. The company allegedly conditions access to these venues on using its own promoters, making it nearly impossible for others to break in.
The jury began to hear about this issue, too, last week, including from Seth Hurwitz, owner of It’s My Party (I.M.P.), which runs major venues around the Washington, DC area like the 9:30 Club and non-Live Nation operated amphitheater Merriweather Post Pavilion. When it comes to amps, it’s basically “me and Live Nation,” he said.
Another witness, former Irvine, CA city manager Oliver Chi, described Live Nation’s aggressive tactics as the city considered alternative operators for the new amp it was building. A lobbyist for the company allegedly told Chi “Live Nation would simply route around” the amp if it were denied the contract.
Live Nation has tried to establish that many of the practices it’s come under fire for — like signing exclusive contracts with venues and having a vertically integrated business — are things that its rivals also do. It attempted to cast doubt on the alleged threats, suggesting, for example, that they were simply neutrally describing risks.
If a settlement isn’t announced today, the jury will likely continue to hear this week from AEG, a similarly structured concert promotions and ticketing business, as well as from a concert fan and some company executives. Eventually, they’re expected to hear from its CEO, and artists Kid Rock and Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett. If the government settles, at least some states may push ahead — and the court will decide the fate of one of the biggest live events empires in the US.