The jury hearing an antitrust case against Live Nation, the concert giant that includes Ticketmaster, returned to court on Monday after a week’s break, during which the Justice Department announced a surprise settlement with the company and a coalition of more than 30 states dissatisfied with the deal decided to continue the case.
“Welcome back, members of the jury, from your spring break,” said Judge Arun Subramanian, as the jurors settled back into their seats in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
The Justice Department, which brought the case two years ago with 39 states and the District of Columbia, accused Live Nation of a far-reaching monopoly in the live entertainment business that stifled competition and, according to the government, drove up ticket prices for fans. Live Nation has denied the accusations.
In testimony on Monday, Jay Marciano, the chief executive of AEG Presents, Live Nation’s biggest rival, spoke about competing against a company that puts on three times as many concerts and sells 10 times as many tickets.
Venues run by AEG, Mr. Marciano said, had lost out on many concerts promoted by Live Nation because they use AEG’s ticketing system, AXS, rather than Ticketmaster. AEG’s venues, like the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, allow Live Nation to use Ticketmaster to sell tickets for Live Nation’s concerts, but Live Nation venues do not permit AXS, Mr. Marciano said.
“We’re precluded from doing that,” Mr. Marciano testified.
Since Justice Department lawyers have left the case, lawyers from state attorneys general and from a law firm hired to represent them led the questioning on behalf of the states.
Mr. Marciano also described situations when Ticketmaster made more from certain ticketing fees than AEG had made as a promoter in an effort to illustrate what he suggested was its industry dominance. He cited a Bruce Springsteen concert in Greensboro, N.C., where 1,372 “platinum” seats were sold using Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing tool, which generated more than $240,000 in fees for Ticketmaster.
“There’s no way we made $240,000 on Bruce Springsteen that night,” Mr. Marciano testified.
Under cross-examination, Mr. Marciano acknowledged that AEG is also a significant power in the music business. It puts on major tours by stars like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, as well as festivals like Coachella. It is also part of a larger company — owned by the billionaire Philip Anschutz — that includes major sports teams and has extensive real estate holdings throughout the world.
At one point, a lawyer for Live Nation went through an alphabetical listing of more than two dozen AEG-operated venues — highlighting that AEG, like Live Nation, is a vertically integrated business with extensive reach.
Still, Mr. Marciano sometimes rued on the stand that the concert business did not operate the way he felt it should. Venues in Europe allow multiple ticketing vendors to sell their tickets, and tend to charge much lower fees than those in the United States. And he suggested that AEG was a reluctant participant in secondary ticket selling, an area where Live Nation earns large fees from tickets resold on its own platform.
“I’d be happy,” Mr. Marciano said, “to give up the secondary business.”
Monday also featured testimony from Bob Roux, Live Nation’s president of U.S. concerts, who was called by both the plaintiffs and the defense. Mr. Roux was confronted with an internal email in which Live Nation executives apparently sought to acquire a regional promoter in Mississippi and Alabama so that a small competitor would not “encroach from the edges” of the market.
Live Nation told the promoter, “Either we are together or we are competitors,” and told one of the principles that Live Nation would employ a “velvet hammer.”
Live Nation ended up buying the promoter, but Mr. Roux denied it was done to eliminate a competitor: “We acquired them because they asked to be.”
The number of states that are continuing the case remains unclear. So far, seven states have indicated to the court that they have joined the Justice Department’s settlement or are in negotiations to do so. The terms of that deal call for Live Nation to set aside a fund of up to $281 million to settle state damages — but the total amount Live Nation pays in that settlement would depend on how many states join it.
So far, Iowa announced it would receive $3 million, and South Dakota said it would get $677,920.
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
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