The former chief executive of the company that owns the Barclays Center testified on Wednesday about an angry phone call he received in 2021 after the arena decided to dump Ticketmaster, a subsidiary of Live Nation, in favor of an upstart competitor.
John Abbamondi told a jury in Manhattan that Michael Rapino, chief executive of Live Nation — the music industry giant that is by far the biggest promoter of major concerts — indicated to him in the call that his company would start steering shows away from the Brooklyn arena, which depended on such shows for its profit.
“I interpreted this comment as a veiled threat — maybe not-so-veiled threat,” Mr. Abbamondi testified in Federal District Court, “that it would be difficult for them to put concerts in Barclays Center.”
A tape recording of the expletive-laden phone call was played in the courtroom, revealing something that music industry insiders may gossip about but few ever witness directly: the heads of two major entertainment companies arguing bitterly over a deal.
“It’s going to be a tough time to deliver tickets for concerts,” Mr. Rapino said on the call, “with a new competitor in town, regardless of ticketing.”
The Justice Department, which has brought an antitrust suit against Live Nation, contends that Mr. Rapino’s call, over Barclays’ switch to the rival ticketer, SeatGeek, was evidence of a commercial threat that violated federal law.
The conflict at the Barclays Center is a key, but disputed, piece of evidence in the Justice Department’s case, about whether Live Nation uses threats and retaliation to maintain a monopolistic grip over the concert business.
According to the government, Live Nation pressures venues to sign exclusive deals with Ticketmaster or else risk losing access to the lucrative tours that Live Nation’s concert promotion division controls. In another claim being tested at the trial, the government alleges that Live Nation tells artists they cannot perform in the company’s amphitheaters unless they use the company’s promoting services — and give it a cut.
Live Nation denies it is a monopoly, denies that it threatens artists or venues and says it has to sweat every deal. To the company, the Barclays story is simply an illustration of the competitive realities in the coveted New York music market.
Mr. Abbamondi testified that the first sign of troubles with Live Nation came before Barclays revealed its new deal with SeatGeek, when word about the arrangement started to leak through the industry. A friend who worked at Live Nation, Mr. Abbamondi testified, sent him a private text message encouraging him to “think about bigger relationship with LN not just who is writing a bigger sponsorship check,” which Mr. Abbamondi said was a reference to SeatGeek. The message ended with a wink emoji.
Mr. Abbamondi, who was at BSE Global, the company behind Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets, from 2020 to 2022, testified that he interpreted that message as a “warning” to stick with Ticketmaster or else lose access to Live Nation’s concerts.
After SeatGeek began handling the tickets for Barclays, Mr. Abbamondi said, Live Nation appeared to follow through on its threat by reducing the number of shows it sent to the Barclays Center. But in 2021, while the concert world was still in a fitful recovery after being shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of Live Nation-promoted shows at Barclays plummeted. Before Covid, Mr. Abbamondi testified, Barclays had about 22 Live Nation shows a year, and in 2021 the venue had anticipated getting 17; instead, Live Nation sent only eight.
In its cross-examination of Mr. Abbamondi, a lawyer for Live Nation, David R. Marriott, focused on the competitive market that Barclays faced, and on the particulars of the arena’s deal with SeatGeek.
Mr. Abbamondi said that weeks before the tense phone call with Mr. Rapino and another top Live Nation executive, Mr. Rapino had told Mr. Abbamondi about the arrival of UBS in Elmont, N.Y., which would introduce a fourth arena to the region, counting the Prudential Center in Newark. That was the “new competitor in town” that Mr. Rapino was referring to, Mr. Marriott said.
Mr. Abbamondi testified that SeatGeek offered superior ticketing technology and better financial terms, saying that his company had determined it would come out ahead even if the arena lost 50 percent of the Live Nation tours it had previously received. SeatGeek offered a lucrative share of the fees on resold tickets as well as $5 million a year for sponsorship rights at Barclays, such as posting banner displays along the venue’s entrance.
But under questioning from Mr. Marriott, Mr. Abbamondi acknowledged having personal ties to SeatGeek. The company had once offered him a job, he said, and he had personal relationships with top SeatGeek executives and had attended the wedding of one of its founders. Mr. Abbamondi also negotiated a deal in which BSE Global would be granted an ownership stake in SeatGeek.
Mr. Marriott also suggested that SeatGeek and Mr. Abbamondi had discussed bringing their complaints to the government, and that after Mr. Abbamondi left Barclays, SeatGeek offered to indemnify him in case he incurred any legal expenses as a result.
“I declined their offer,” Mr. Abbamondi testified.
A second witness, Mitch Helgerson, the chief revenue officer of the Minnesota Wild hockey team, testified that after the team’s venue, the Xcel Energy Center — which used Ticketmaster — solicited bids from rival ticketing companies, including SeatGeek, a Ticketmaster executive told him they could lose Live Nation concerts to competing venues if they switched ticketing partners. Fearful of losing that content, the venue, now called the Grand Casino Arena, decided to stay with Ticketmaster.
“Losing those shows would be almost catastrophic to our organization,” Mr. Helgerson said.
Mr. Abbamondi described one programming change as a “smoking gun” that showed Barclays had been punished. He testified that in March 2020, before the pandemic forced the cancellation of her tour, Billie Eilish had been scheduled to play at Barclays and Madison Square Garden. When she planned her next tour for 2022, Mr. Abbamondi said, she returned to the Garden — but played at UBS instead of Barclays.
Mr. Abbamondi testified that Live Nation told Barclays that playing at UBS was the artist’s decision. But he said one of Ms. Eilish’s managers told a Barclays employee that Live Nation had made the decision.
Live Nation’s lawyer objected to the testimony as hearsay and the judge overseeing the case, Arun Subramanian, agreed and told the jury to disregard it.
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.
The post Former Barclays Center Executive Says Live Nation Threatened to Pull Tours appeared first on New York Times.
