AEG CEO Jay Marciano Calls Live Nation A Monopoly, Predicts DOJ Victory in Lawsuit
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AEG chairman/CEO Jay Marciano says Live Nation acts like a monopoly and agrees with the U.S. Department of Justice’s effort to break the concert giant and Ticketmaster up, according to an email Marciano sent out to employees on Friday (May 31). In the memo, the executive accuses the company of “preventing other businesses from competing” and “leaving consumers to suffer the consequences.”
In the two-page email, Marciano said the lawsuit was an important milestone for addressing alleged monopolistic behavior in the concert business, noting “the entire ecosystem of our industry” is at stake as the case winds its way through the U.S. legal system.
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“Notwithstanding its claims about its profit margins or its market share, it is a monopoly, and it uses its monopoly power to impose its will on the live entertainment business,” wrote Marciano of Live Nation, later writing, “We strongly believe that DOJ’s lawsuit will succeed and ultimately bring sweeping changes.”
Billboard obtained a copy of the email, which can be read in full below. An AEG spokesman did not respond to a request for comment regarding the letter. Live Nation had not responded to a request for comment at press time.
From: Office of Jay Marciano
No doubt all of you are closely following the ongoing media coverage in the wake of the Department of Justice lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. As I mentioned in my note from last week, we spent the last few days carefully reviewing the DOJ filing, as well as Live Nation’s subsequent response to the complaint.
AEG has long maintained that Ticketmaster has a monopoly in the U.S. ticketing marketplace and uses that monopoly power to subsidize Live Nation’s content businesses, preventing other businesses from competing in those areas and leaving consumers to suffer the consequences. This lawsuit is not simply DOJ suing to break up a monopoly; at stake is the entire ecosystem of our industry, one that has long suffered from a badly broken ticketing model. As you know, the cornerstone of Live Nation’s monopoly is Ticketmaster’s exclusive ticketing contracts with the vast majority of major concert venues in the United States. These agreements block competition and innovation and result in higher ticketing fees, denying artists the ability to choose who will ticket their shows and how much their fans should pay.
Following the DOJ filing, Live Nation issued several public comments in service of its ongoing strategy to maintain its dominance – unfairly blaming others for industry problems they have created, making false and misleading statements, and dismissing the significance of the case. Artists, venues, and brokers are not responsible for the broken live entertainment business model in this country – that res...
Software Engineer, Real Estate Investor, and Business Owner. Formerly Microsoft, Amazon, Nordstrom.
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