The government also sought to highlight Live Nation’s spotty record in serving members of the public through Ticketmaster. Mr. Dahlquist pointed to the botched ticket sale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2022, when millions of fans were shut out — an incident that led to a combative Senate Judiciary hearing in early 2023, when lawmakers from both parties called Live Nation a monopoly.
Mr. Dahlquist said problems like those surrounding the Swift sale were signs that Live Nation, because of its monopoly power, did not need to have Ticketmaster operate efficiently. Rather than build the best ticketing technology, he said, Live Nation had underinvested in Ticketmaster because it does not face a major competitor.
“Their technology,” Mr. Dahlquist said, “is held together by duct tape.”
Mr. Marriott disputed that analysis, arguing that the Swift sale had been disrupted by a massive attack from online bots — and that rather than failing, Ticketmaster’s engineers had the system back up and running in a few hours.
The case is anticipated to last six weeks. A majority of the witnesses are expected to be top executives from throughout the music business, among them Michael Rapino, Live Nation’s longtime chief executive. One of the few top artists on the witness lists is Kid Rock, the outspoken rap-rock star who has emerged as a vocal critic of the industry’s status quo when it comes to ticketing.
On Wednesday, the first witness is expected to be the former chief executive of the company behind the Barclays Center, the basketball and music arena in Brooklyn. Barclays broke with Ticketmaster in 2021 in favor of SeatGeek — and, according to the government, suffered a loss of Live Nation-promoted tours in retaliation, before returning to Ticketmaster less than two years later.
The Justice Department was joined in the case by the attorneys general of 39 states and the District of Columbia. In a brief statement to the jury, Jonathan Hatch, of the New York attorney general’s office, discussed potential damages in the case in terms of the impact on consumers who, according to the government’s case, paid higher fees that Live Nation and Ticketmaster were able to charge because of their monopoly power.
