NEW YORK (AP) — Live Nation Entertainment’s longtime chief executive was the star witness at a New York antitrust trial Thursday, defending the dominant position his company has taken over the last two decades as a lawyer for nearly three dozen states tried to portray the concert giant as greedy and abusive to customers.
Michael Rapino, who has led the company since it was formed 21 years ago, testified at the trial resulting from the lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department brought two years ago against Live Nation and its ticketing subsidiary, Ticketmaster.
“I'm very proud,” Rapino said, speaking of the way he believed his company had taken a fragmented industry over 20 years ago and organized it to better serve artists and fans in a manner that other companies now try to emulate. In 2010, Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster.
The federal government settled its role in the case last week, winning concessions from Live Nation that are meant to increase competition and ideally lower ticket prices for concertgoers. Six states have joined the federal government in settling. But 33 states and the District of Columbia are continuing the court fight.
Attorney Jeffrey Kessler, representing the states, questioned Rapino throughout the day as he tried to show the company was shutting out competitors and driving up prices for fans.
Live Nation CEO says profits hard to find in concert industry
Rapino portrayed the concert promotion and ticketing industry as so competitive with such narrow profit margins that Wall Street was skeptical that the public company could produce steady growth and profits. He said 40 amphitheaters it owns or controls would lose $150 million annually if Live Nation couldn't profit from the sale of food and beverages, parking and other amenity products such as lawn chairs.
At one point, Kessler brought up 2022 messages in which one of Live Nation's key ticketing employees wrote to another employee on the company's private messaging system that some customers were “so stupid” and boasted of “robbing them blind, baby” on the sale of the amenities, including access to VIP areas.
Rapino called the language “disgusting” and “not the way we operate” and said he just learned about it last week and planned “to deal with it this week.”
As Kessler pressed as to whether the employee would be disciplined, Rapino said his company tends “to give employees a break” and added that “I heard he's apologized.”
Live Nation has said that the company only learned of the employee's private messages last week when they were made public in the litigation. Its lawyers have described the conversation as “off-the-cuff banter, not policy” between two employees who are personal friends.
The chastened employee, Benjamin Baker, now head of ticketing for Venue Nation, which includes the company's amphitheaters, described the messages as “very immature and unacceptable” when he testified this week.
Relaxed Rapino calmly rejected claims by the states
Throughout his testimony Thursday, Rapino remained composed and relaxed as he explained why he believed many of Kessler's assertions were misleading or wrong.
For instance, Kessler confronted him with a Ticketmaster executive's explanation on the day of the company’s infamously problem-plagued effort to sell Taylor Swift tickets in 2022 that outdated Ticketmaster systems were to blame.
“We thought demand overloaded the system,” Rapino said. “It turned out not to be true.”
Instead, he said, a cyberattack was to blame.
Kessler confronted Rapino with email evidence that he said shows that Live Nation threatens to reduce the number of concerts a venue can get if it doesn't use Ticketmaster. Rapino brushed it off.
“In 15 years, there have been a few of those wild emails,” he said, adding that the threat never “actually materialized.”
He said most exclusive ticketing deals Live Nation signs with big venues such as stadiums and arenas originate because wealthy sports team owners insist upon it so they have more control and don't have to deal with multiple players.
“I don't tell the billionaire what to do with his venue. He tells me,” Rapino said.
Lawyer for states tried to show Live Nation was greedy as Rapino pushed back
When Kessler suggested that Live Nation banned customers from bringing their own lawn chairs to its 40 amphitheaters across the country so it could force them to pay extra for the company's lawn chairs, Rapino pushed back.
“It was a safety issue, for sure,” Rapino said, explaining that event spectators were getting upset with one another because fans were bringing various sized chairs, sometimes obstructing the views of others.
At another point, Kessler brought up a 2024 controversy in which some fans of the singer Adele complained about Ticketmaster's handling of presale tickets.
Rapino, though, explained that the controversy reflected an instance in which rival ticketing companies pretend they are fan clubs to “get tickets for free we had to acquire.”
Kessler asked Rapino if Live Nation rejected Adele's offer to pay ticketing fees to satisfy her fans.
“We would never say no to Adele,” Rapino said. “We said no to the ticketing company.”