🧾 What Was Left Out:

Live Nation doesn’t set face value prices — artists and their teams do. And artists keep roughly 90% of that value. Promoters operate on very thin margins, often around 2%.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“The core of the business with concert promotion is super low margins, you know, probably about 2% nowadays. If you rewind 20 years ago and think about the face value of a ticket, maybe 60% of that was going to the artist, 40% to the promoter, but the entire economics of the music industry have flipped on its head… That split nowadays is typically 90% to the artist, 5–10% to the promoter.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

Scalping and bots — not Ticketmaster — are what drive up prices. We block nearly 1 million bots per minute, but real change will require stronger laws and enforcement.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“When it comes to resale, a lot of fans get really frustrated when they see tickets pop up on resellers right away. We’re fighting bots left and right. I was talking to our tech team just last week and they mentioned they were blocking nearly a million bots a minute. That is up almost 10x from just a few years ago.”

“Fighting bots is like trying to swat away a swarm of mosquitoes… But that’s just treating the symptom. The problem is the swamp — the $13 billion resale market that scalpers are feeding off of. We need real rules and regulations to drain that swamp.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

Ticketmaster is the only major resale platform that verifies tickets, bans speculative listings, and offers artists the option to use a Face Value Exchange ticket exchange to prevent scalper markups.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“Ticketmaster is the only resale marketplace that verifies tickets, so fans know that if they buy a ticket from us, they’re going to get in the door. We also ban speculative ticketing… and we also try to take an approach to resale that respects the artist’s wishes, which is why we’ve created the face value exchange.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

Our policy to let artists keep all merch revenue has delivered tens of millions directly to club-level artists.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“We’ve also totally revamped the way merch works in our club venues, which is a huge revenue stream for artists. And any artist playing our clubs keeps 100% of the merch profits that they sold in that space, which is also getting tens of millions of dollars to those club artists, and something we were really proud to lead on.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

Live Nation’s growth is part of a much larger industry expansion, fueled by more artists touring, more cities being played, and more fans attending live shows around the world. We’ve helped drive that growth, but we weren’t the only ones to benefit — as the industry globalized and demand surged, the overall pie grew for everyone, creating more opportunity across the entire live music ecosystem.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“So the industry overall is growing and you think of the live music pie today to what it was a decade ago, there are twice as many artists on the road and that’s fueled by that fan demand and experience economy and all of that.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

What once counted as a “world tour” — typically just the U.S. and U.K. — now spans Asia, Latin America, Australia, and beyond. This surge in international fan demand requires deep infrastructure, local expertise, and global coordination. Live Nation has built a touring network with boots on the ground in 200+ cities to help artists tap into that opportunity. By expanding access to markets that were once overlooked, we’ve helped artists grow their fanbases, increase earnings, and reach new corners of the world.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“Ten years ago a world tour was really the US and the UK, now, it’s truly Latin America, Asia, Australia. And so, you know, our goal is to just bring more of those live music memories to the world and we’re excited to kind of keep that going.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

There’s a growing global need for more venues to meet record fan demand. Live Nation is investing in new, purpose-built venues that support artists on tour and cater to fans’ evolving preferences — from GA with a cold beer to immersive VIP experiences and everything in between.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“We’re designing venues with better acoustics, backstage areas, and spaces where fans can hang before and after shows… Most fans go to one or two shows a year — some want a general admission vibe with good food and a cold beer, others want a memorable VIP moment. We’re building spaces that offer it all.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

Far from sidelining indie venues, Live Nation supports them. In 2024 alone, we promoted nearly 6,000 shows at independent clubs and theaters — more than triple a decade ago.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“We continue to invest across the industry… Most of the shows that we promote are happening in venues that we don’t own or operate. If you look at the indie club and theater level, we put three times as many shows in those venues last year as we did from a decade ago … Artists playing at the club and theater level in 2024 were paid 25% more last year than in 2019.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

The DOJ’s figure estimating Live Nation venue ownership, repeated in the WSJ piece, is misleading. Live Nation owns or operates just 4% of the 4,000+ concert venues in the U.S. Most shows we promote happen in venues we don’t own.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“Across the United States, we have about 4% of the venues in the country… DOJ often claims a stat that we control 70 percent of venues in this country, which just isn’t accurate.”

“They try to kind of muddy the lines and say we control all these venues, even though a big chunk of them, especially the big ones, we’re not the owner and operator… Most of the shows we’re promoting are in venues that we do not own and operate.”

🧾 What Was Left Out:

The DOJ’s lawsuit doesn’t address the issues fans care most about, like ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows. It overlooks how the live entertainment ecosystem actually works. The majority of service fees go to venues, and Ticketmaster’s market share has declined since 2010, not increased. There is more competition in ticketing and promotion today than ever before. Live Nation’s growth reflects the global surge in demand for live music.

🎙️ Here’s What We Said that Wasn’t Used:

“Overall, there is more competition in the industry today than there ever has been. There are more ticketing companies now than at the point of the merger. And you see that in the fact that Ticketmaster’s market share has gone down, not up, since that time… The DOJ has also said that their case is going to help bring ticket prices down for consumers, which there’s nothing in that case that will affect ticket prices at all.”