10 More States Sign onto Department of Justice’s Live Nation, Ticketmaster Antitrust Suit

Live Nation and its ticketing subsidiary Ticketmaster were hit with an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice and 29 states earlier this year. Now, 10 additional states’ attorney generals have signed onto the suit, which aims to break-up the pair for their alleged monopolistic business practices.

The Attorneys General of Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah, and Vermont joined the civil antitrust suit on Monday, meaning that only 10 states are not signed-on at this time. The suit, a more than 100 page document, was filed in the Southern District of New York by the department and its now-expanded group of 40 co-plaintiffs. It claims Live Nation and Ticketmaster are in violation of both federal and state laws, alleging their anticompetitive course of conduct in markets across the entertainment industry.

“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”

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The bipartisan non-profit organization Fan Fairness Coalition applauded the news on Monday, with FFC President and Republican antitrust expert Mark Meador noting that “Democrats, Republicans, and independents have all been rippled off by Ticketmaster’s monopoly and today’s news demonstrates the bipartisan momentum behind the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against them.”

“Live event fans across America are applauding this bipartisan effort to hold Ticketmaster accountable for years of anticompetitive behavior that’s driven up costs, undermined access to tickets and resulted in several disastrous ticket sale rollouts,” Meador said. “The DOJ and 40 Attorneys General across America are doing the right thing to restore free market and competition to the ticketing industry to protect fans from continued abuse at the hands of Ticketmaster.”

While Live Nation asked U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian to move the case from his Southern District of New York court to the District Court for the District of Columbia last month, the DOJ pushed-back against the request, noting that “this case belongs in New York, a city that has long been a hub in the live music industry for artists, fans, and industry participants.”

“New York is home to two of Ticketmaster’s few competitors twenty-plus entities from the parties’ initial disclosures, numerous amphitheaters and arenas, material non-party and party witnesses, and defendants’ largest office outside of California,” the motion reads.

While Subramanian has not commented on the motion, he previously stated that he would be inclined to keep the case in his New York District Court.

The entertainment giant has already sought to have many portions of the case dismissed entirely, but is clearly pursuing multiple angles of attack against the sprawling lawsuit seeking to break it up after more than a decade of allegations of anticompetitive and monopolistic behavior. They’ve also fought to keep key corporate officers — including antitrust czar Dan Wall — able to access all discovery files in legal filings made last month.

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Subramanian proposed a two-tiered access system or case-related documents, preserving the right of Wall and Kimberly Tobias (Live Nation’s SVP of Litigation) to participate in the corporation’s defense alongside external counsel while restricting their access to certain documents that could provide them with confidential information about Live Nation’s competition.

Last month, Subramanian reminded both parties that “discovery needs to get going in this case, because the March 2, 2026 trial date is set in stone.”