If you’ve ever been to a live event in the past few decades, you probably have a low opinion of Live Nation — or for that matter Ticketmaster, its subsidiary it merged with to form a sprawling entertainment monopoly.
Rest assured that the feeling is mutual.
Explosive internal messages, revealed in a lawsuit, show two Live Nation directors mocking its “stupid” customers for paying the service’s jacked-up fees, and openly gloating about “robbing them blind,” per new reporting from Bloomberg and The New York Times.
The messages come from a series of Slack exchanges in 2022 between Ben Baker and Jeff Weinhold, two regional directors of ticketing for Live Nation. Baker is head of ticketing for Venue Nation, and Weinhold is senior ticketing director for the DMV area around Washington, DC.
Across the exchanges, the pair bragged about shamelessly jacking up the cost of “ancillary fees” that include parking, lawn chair rentals, and VIP passes, and getting concertgoers to pay them anyway.
For a show at a Virginia venue, Weinhold preened himself for raising “VIP parking up to $250 lol.”
“These people are so stupid,” Baker said amid Weinhold’s boast. “I almost feel bad taking advantage of them.”
The pair also bragged about making money hand over fist through “premier parking” fees, generating $666,000 at a single venue from those fees alone in 2021. Baker said he was charging “$50 to park in the grass” and “$60 for closer grass.”
“Robbing them blind baby,” Baker wrote. “That’s how we do.”
“I gouge them on ancil prices,” he later added.
Critics and lawmakers have long accused Live Nation and Ticketmaster of monopolistic behavior. After they merged in 2010, Ticketmaster became a subsidiary; many lawmakers feel this merger should never have been allowed to happen.
That argument is the thrust of a federal antitrust suit brought against Live Nation by the Justice Department, through which the exchanges between Baker and Weinhold have been revealed. First filed two years ago and backed by attorneys general from 39 states, the suit asserts that the company maintains an illegal monopoly over the live events industry to charge exorbitant ticket prices and other fees, at the expense of customers, venues, and artists.
Live Nation asked the judge to exclude the exchanges from being used as evidence in the trial last week, characterizing them as “off-the-cuff banter, not policy, decision-making or facts of consequence” to the case. The judge, Arun Subramanian, disagreed, and ordered the documents be released to the public, after petitions from media organizations including Bloomberg and The New York Times.
Baker was set to testify, but the trial is now on pause after the the Justice Department reached an surprise settlement with Live Nation on Monday, shocking states that had joined the case. Some 27 state attorneys general are preparing their own cases to continue litigation.
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The post Live Nation Directors Mocked Customers in Explosive Just-Released Messages, Saying They’re “Stupid” for Allowing Themselves to Be Gouged appeared first on Futurism.
