The Scoop
Settlement talks between ticketing giant Live Nation and the Justice Department are deepening fractures inside the Trump administration over antitrust enforcement.
Live Nation executives and lobbyists have been negotiating with senior DOJ officials outside the antitrust division to avert a trial over whether the company is operating an illegal monopoly that has driven up concert prices, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of those talks have sidelined antitrust chief Gail Slater, who inherited the Live Nation case from the Biden administration but has pursued it toward a trial set for March.
Tensions have been simmering for months between the Trump administration’s largely business-friendly accommodation and Slater’s more skeptical approach to corporate mergers. Her authority has been challenged in several high-profile cases, diminishing hopes in both progressive and populist MAGA circles for tough antitrust enforcement.
Last year, HPE and Juniper avoided an antitrust challenge to their $16 billion merger by appealing directly to top Trump DOJ officials who overruled Slater’s team, Semafor and other outlets reported. A large merger of real-estate brokerages similarly was greenlit by higher-ups over the objections of Slater and antitrust staffers, one of whom went public in August with concerns about pay-for-play merger approvals.
In a smaller flashpoint this week, Slater was prevented from cutting loose her own chief of staff after Attorney General Pam Bondi intervened, Semafor reported Friday.
“This report contains misinformation about an ongoing matter that is confidential, but what can be said is that AAG Slater is very much involved” in the Live Nation matter, a Justice Department spokesman said. “Anonymous attempts to alter markets or outcomes will not undermine the integrity of this process. This DOJ will always pursue what is in the best interest of the American people.”
A Live Nation spokeswoman didn’t comment.
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A DOJ settlement, if one can be reached, would not stop the 40 states that have also sued Live Nation over alleged anticompetitive behavior. But it would relieve some pressure on the ticketing platform, which added Trump ally Richard Grenell to its board last year. A separate lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, accusing Live Nation of cooperating with scalpers to raise resale prices, continues, too.
Former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and Trump ally Mike Davis — who lobbied on behalf of HPE-Juniper and is among those set to be deposed in a lawsuit brought by state attorneys general on the matter — have advised Live Nation on its settlement talks with the DOJ, some of the people said, with Conway playing the lead role in recent weeks. She has met recently with both Slater and representatives from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office, one of the people said.
Conway and Davis declined to comment. Grenell did not respond to requests for comment.
The terms of any potential settlement remain unclear. The Biden administration DOJ officials who brought the case in 2024 argued that nothing short of breaking up the company would restore competition. The company controls an estimated 70% of the event ticketing market, even after remedies ordered by the DOJ in 2010, when Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged, and later extended during Trump’s first term.
The case appeared to be a priority for the president, who issued an executive order last spring to tackle pricing in venue ticketing, which he said had become “blighted by unscrupulous middlemen.”