Will Live Nation & Ticketmaster Really Get Broken Up?
Categoria: Musica
Critics say only a court-ordered breakup will end Live Nation’s monopoly, but such orders have been exceedingly rare over the past century.
Por Billboard | 29/05/2026
Back in May 2024, when then-Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the U.S. Department of Justice had filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, he didn’t exactly mince words: “It is time to break it up.” And now two years later, after a coalition of states decisively won that case , they’re asking the judge for exactly what Garland promised: A court order forcing Live Nation to sell Ticketmaster. They say it’s the only way to end the company’s harmful monopoly over live music. Related Live Nation Lost Its Monopoly Trial. What’s Next — and Could Ticketmaster Really Be Sold? Suspect in Taylor Swift Vienna Concert Attack Plot Convicted & Sentenced to 15 Years Man Who Plotted to Attack Taylor Swift Vienna Concert Apologizes Ahead of Verdict in Trial But such a ruling would be extraordinary, in the truest sense of the word. Breakup orders (known as “structural remedies” in antitrust law parlance) on the scale of Live Nation and Ticketmaster have been granted only a few times over the last century. Experts tell Billboard they can be effective, but that judges view them as a drastic, last-ditch option. “There’s often been anxiety on the part of judges about restructuring industries,” says William E. Kovacic , a law professor at George Washington University and a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. “The power is there. Judges have the capacity to put a bold structural remedy in place. But they’re looking for assurances that it’s going to do more good than harm.” A federal judge famously ordered John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil be broken up into dozens of companies in 1911 — a landmark ruling of the trustbusting era that eventually spawned today’s oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. Then in 1982, AT&T agreed to a settlement in a federal antitrust case that saw the massive national telephone monopoly broken up into “Baby Bells” across different regions of the country. Microsoft almost got broken up. After a judge ruled it had violated antitrust law by crushing competition for computer software, he ordered the tech giant split in two — with one firm to own Windows, the other owning apps like Word and Internet Explorer. But that ruling was overturned on appeal a year later, and Microsoft later signed a settlement that restricted its conduct instead of carving it up. Courts are wary of breakup orders for a few reasons. Federal district judges are single individuals, with the power to decide only specific disputes based on facts that are presented to them. They lack the broad investigative powers and administrative resources available to legislators and executive agencies to tackle complex policy problems. And breaking up a modern company is certainly complex. It’s hard for a judge to figure out how to cleanly split up units that have long been intertwined, or divide intangible assets like shared data and intellec