So let me see…

They put Richard Grenell on the board, they hire behind-the-scenes fixer Mike Davis, who put the knife in the back of Gail Slater, the chief antitrust officer, they even employ Ms. Alternative Facts herself, Kellyanne Conway, and THEY STILL LOSE?

This is not a story of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. This is not a story of concert ticket prices. This is a story of the Trump administration and its losing streak.

We can start with a war that’s not a war that has never been adequately explained to the public that is ruining the world economy.

Then we can go to the insane support of authoritarian Viktor Orbán, J.D. Vance even traveling to Hungary to try and boost his candidacy, with Orbán ending up being trounced…

The bottom line is when Biden was in office, the antitrust division believed it would defeat Live Nation no problem, which is why this case was never settled. Believe me, Live Nation wanted to settle.

And then after Slater was blown out and the case was going poorly in court, Mike Davis made a secret settlement with the government, leaving out not only the judge, but the government’s own attorneys and the states, and then continued the trial! It’s almost out of “The Godfather,” then again, the Mafia has a code, whereas Trump makes it up as he goes.

Belief has been if you kiss his ass, if you pay fealty, it’s all going to work out.

So we’ve got law firms settling, Tim Apple giving Donald a gold award, FIFA coming up with a “Peace Prize” and Maria Corina Machado handing over her Nobel Peace Prize… But Trump and his minions can’t stop shooting themselves in the foot. It’s almost laughable. Pam Bondi with her burn book then getting blown out. Noem with her jet and its bedroom… Never mind nincompoops like Hegseth. They all thought they were invulnerable, because they were the sweepers pushing aside the dung in the wake of Trump’s elephant.

It’s even worse… The Supreme Court has legitimized so much of Trump’s behavior.

SO WHY IS HE LOSING!

The only question in this trial is why it took the jury so long to reach a verdict. I truly thought they’d come back in an hour or two, max. The fact that they were taking their time over days made me believe that this slam dunk might not be one.

But it turned out to be one.

As for the attorneys on both sides?

Latham & Watkins was arguing the law, that’s how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger got approved in the first place, high-priced lawyers negotiating with the government. But when the states grew balls and decided to continue the trial on their own, they hired Jeffrey Kessler, who’d just helped Michael Jordan behead the indomitable NASCAR.

Kessler simplified the case, he did the opposite of Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden in the O.J. trial. He didn’t bore the jury with endless evidence, he just focused on the concept of Live Nation being a monopoly, he kept driving that home.

Anybody with any legal experience knew that Live Nation was f*cked from the get-go. A jury trial? Come on… Which is one of the reasons they settled, on very advantageous terms not long after the trial began.

So what happens now…

One thing is for sure, ticket prices won’t go down. They’re a function of the marketplace. To get people to understand ticketing is like trying to get them to understand how AI works… They don’t, and they trust misinformation all day long.

But they want to go to the show and they believe that since they’re big fans they’re entitled to a ticket up close for under a hundred bucks.

So really, this trial is inside baseball. About what happens behind the scenes…other promoters, other ticketing companies. Because the public? It ain’t gonna benefit at all, not really.

Then again, it feels good. Like when Microsoft was beaten in the Internet Explorer case back in 2000. If you look at the details, they’re not that different. Microsoft was using its leverage to dominate the browser wars, never mind control the internet.

But Google came along and now owns the browser market with Chrome. Begging the question if you need antitrust enforcement or the market will always solve the underlying problem.

But even more interesting is despite all of Steve Ballmer’s missteps, like buying the handset business of Nokia, twenty five years later Microsoft is once again a monolith! It pivoted to cloud storage and…

If Live Nation loses Ticketmaster… It may be case closed, but business goes on. Live Nation dwarfs its competitors in terms of venues and shows. I don’t see anybody else ponying up that kind of money. And this scale throws off sponsorship revenue that allows the company to pay artists in many cases more than anybody else.

Of course having Ticketmaster is an advantage. But if you believe slicing Ticketmaster from Live Nation cuts the concert promotion company off at the knees, you’re sorely mistaken.

Then again, what we’ve got here is the power of the individual. No one else could  make SFX/Clear Channel what ultimately became Live Nation work. Michael Rapino sliced off the legitimate theatre division, Ticketmaster was merged with the company. You can take away some of the toys, but not the vision.

But what really killed Live Nation in this case was human nature. American business is about cutting corners, and the odds of being caught are now infinitesimal. Trump has said that bribing foreign entities for business is legit. Trump has eviscerated the IRS. But the business of most companies doesn’t elicit the passion that concerts do.

So…

Did the Live Nation employees do everything they were accused of? OF COURSE THEY DID! They wanted to look good to the boss, they wanted to get their bonus, a bigger bonus. They used every tool in the box, business is all about leverage anyway.

FURTHERMORE, they put it all in e-mail. What dummies. When it’s questionable, don’t document, because if you don’t there’s always plausible deniability. If you think the employees who crossed the line in this case are masterminds, geniuses, you’ve never worked in the entertainment business, which is the opposite of tech, it’s based on bullying, pure power, good luck with the rules, there aren’t any. So you expect the people in the trenches to observe a consent decree? Give me a break.

Now we’ve got to wait for the judge’s decision… To tell you the truth, as I’ve stated previously, I don’t see how anything but a clear division, a breakup, works. Yup, separating Ticketmaster from Live Nation. Because putting conditions on a deal, counting on Live Nation to do the right thing, that hasn’t worked.

But I can’t predict the future.

Believe me, Live Nation will look to settle again. But the company has burned out its good will with the judge, by going behind his back and settling with the government and not cluing him in on the deal.

And if there’s no settlement, there will be an appeal that goes on for years and…

What is being sold is a unique, once in a lifetime experience. It’s not  like a movie, which opens up in thousands of theatres across the nation, then plays on the home screen forever. No, the act may never play the songs from this tour ever again. The act might never go on the road ever again. In a world where you’ve got no trust in the government, where you need a north star, you rely on music to get you through. You want to see the acts live, you’ve GOT to see the acts live. And in a digital world lived on our devices, concerts are one of the few places where you can get together with your brethren in real life and have a good time.

The concert business has never been healthier. More acts are doing more business. Both old and new. You can play arenas on your first tour! That never happened before.

So if you saw Billy Joel… You  might not ever be able to see him again. And, you can tell the tale of seeing him for the rest of your life!

So even if Ticketmaster is severed from Live Nation, the latter company is not defeated.

But Donald Trump and his gang that can’t shoot straight? As the losses pile up… People and corporations will no longer be afraid of him. They’ll pull up to the bumper and put up a fight. Akin to Ukraine and Russia.

As for today’s success… This is the greatest victory for the public in years, there might not be parties in the street, but the big bad evil empire has been crushed, brought down a notch, TAKE THAT!

Could Live Nation have foreseen this?

OF COURSE!

But to rein in its employees would be antithetical to its mission.

In other words, the company was asking for it. And the only people pissed today, who are upset, are those who work at Live Nation itself. The rest of the business, the public, they’re partying like it’s 1999.

But it’s still 2026. The government still doesn’t understand the concert business, nor does the public.

But this is perceived as a victory for the little guy.

HOORAY!