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David McCabe reports on tech policy from Washington. Ben Sisario reports on the music industry from New York. May 23, 2024Updated 11:11 a.m. ET

The Justice Department on Thursday sued Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, asking a court to break up the company over claims it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry.

In the lawsuit, which is joined by 29 states and the District of Columbia, the government accuses Live Nation of dominating the industry by locking venues into exclusive ticketing contracts, pressuring artists to use its services and threatening its rivals with financial retribution.

Those tactics, the government argues, have resulted in higher ticket prices for consumers and have stifled innovation and competition throughout the industry.

“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” Merrick Garland, the attorney general, said in a statement announcing the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit asks the court to order “the divestiture of, at minimum, Ticketmaster,” and to prevent Live Nation from engaging in anticompetitive practices.

The lawsuit is a direct challenge to the business of Live Nation, a colossus of the entertainment industry and a force in the lives of musicians and fans alike. The case, filed 14 years after the government approved Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster, has the potential to transform the multibillion-dollar concert industry.

Live Nation’s scale and reach far exceed those of any competitor, encompassing concert promotion, ticketing, artist management and the operation of hundreds of venues and festivals around the world.

According to the Justice Department, Live Nation controls around 60 percent of concert promotions at major venues around the United States and roughly 80 percent of primary ticketing at major concert venues.

Lawmakers, fans and competitors have accused the company of engaging in practices that harm rivals and drive up ticket prices and fees. At a congressional hearing early last year, prompted by a Taylor Swift tour presale on Ticketmaster that left millions of people unable to buy tickets, senators from both parties called Live Nation a monopoly.

In its complaint, the Justice Department refers to the many add-on fees as “essentially a ‘Ticketmaster Tax’ that ultimately raise the price fans pay.”

In response to the suit, Live Nation denied that it was a monopoly and said that breaking it up would not result in lower ticket prices or fees. According to the company, artists and sports teams are primarily responsible for setting ticket prices, and other business partners, like venues, take the lion’s share of surcharges.

In a statement, Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, said that the Justice Department’s suit followed “intense political pressure.”

The government’s case, Mr. Wall added, “ignores everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices, from increasing production costs to artist popularity, to 24/7 online ticket scalping that reveals the public’s willingness to pay far more than primary tickets cost.”

The company also says its market share for ticketing has decreased in the recent years as it competes with rivals to win business.

In recent years, American regulators have sued other major companies, testing century-old antitrust laws against new power wielded by major companies over consumers. The Justice Department sued Apple in March, arguing the company has made it difficult for customers to ditch its devices, and has already brought two cases arguing Google violated antitrust laws. The Federal Trade Commission last year filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon for harming sellers on its platform and is pursuing another against Meta, in part for its acquisitions of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

The Justice Department allowed Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, to buy Ticketmaster in 2010 under certain conditions laid out in a legal agreement. If venues did not use Ticketmaster, for example, Live Nation could not threaten to pull concert tours.

In 2019, however, the Justice Department found that Live Nation had violated those terms, and it modified and extended its agreement with the company.

The Justice Department argued in its lawsuit it provided to The New York Times that Live Nation exploited relationships with partners to keep competitors out of the market. It requests a jury trial.

The government’s complaint argued that Live Nation threatened venues with losing access to popular tours if they did not use Ticketmaster. That threat could be explicit or simply an implication communicated through intermediaries, the government said, adding it could also block artists who did not work with the company from using its venues.

Additionally, Live Nation has acquired a number of smaller companies — something Live Nation described in internal documents as eliminating its biggest threats, according to the government.

The Justice Department accused Live Nation of anticompetitive behavior with the Oak View Group, a venue company co-founded by Live Nation’s former executive chairman. Oak View Group has avoided bidding against Live Nation when it comes to working with artists and it has influenced concert venues to sign deals with Ticketmaster, the government argues.

In 2016, Live Nation’s chief executive complained in an email that the Oak View Group had offered to promote an artist that had previously worked with Live Nation. Oak View Group backed down, according to the government.

“Our guys got a bit ahead,” the company’s chief executive replied in an email, according to the government. “All know we don’t promote and we only do tours with Live Nation.”

The Justice Department’s latest investigation of Live Nation began in 2022. Live Nation simultaneously ramped up its lobbying efforts, spending $2.4 million on federal lobbying in 2023, up from $1.1 million in 2022, according to filings available through the nonpartisan website OpenSecrets.

In April, the company co-hosted a lavish party in Washington ahead of the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that featured a performance by the country singer Jelly Roll and cocktail napkins that displayed positive facts about Live Nation’s impact on the economy, like the billions it says it pays to artists.

Under pressure from the White House, Live Nation said in June that it would begin to show prices for shows at venues it owned that included all charges, including extra fees. The Federal Trade Commission has proposed a rule that would ban hidden fees.

A former chairman of the commission, Bill Kovacic, said Wednesday that a lawsuit against the company would be a rebuke of earlier antitrust officials who had allowed the company to grow to its current size.

“It’s another way of saying earlier policy failed and failed badly,” he said.

Mr Blinken told a congressional hearing he was "committed" to taking action against the "profoundly wrong-headed decision".

His comments come amid a Republican push to impose sanctions on ICC officials, which may see a vote as soon as this week.

The United States is not a member of the court but has backed previous prosecutions, including the ICC's arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine.

At a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, James Risch, its top Republican, asked whether Mr Blinken would support legislation to address the ICC "sticking its nose in the business of countries that have an independent, legitimate, democratic judicial system".

"We want to work with you on a bipartisan basis to find an appropriate response. I'm committed to doing that," the secretary of state said.

Mr Blinken said "there's no question we have to look at the appropriate steps to take to deal with, again, what is a profoundly wrong-headed decision".

The ICC's chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced on Monday that he had applied for arrest warrants against Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Mr Khan is also seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas officials - Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza, Mohammed Deif, the commander of its Qassam Brigades military wing, and Ismail Haniyeh, the head of its political bureau.

US President Joe Biden said on Monday it was "outrageous" to apply for arrest warrants. There was "no equivalence - none - between Israel and Hamas", he added.

Mr Blinken's remarks echoed the broader pushback in Washington over the court's decision.

At least two measures imposing sanctions on the ICC had already been introduced in Congress as the court ramped up its inquiry into Israel's handling of the war in Gaza.

Support on Capitol Hill appears to be coalescing around a bill launched earlier this month by Texas Republican Chip Roy.

The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act would target ICC officials involved with the case by blocking their entry to the US, revoking any current US visas they hold, and prohibiting them from any property transactions within the country - unless the court ceases its cases against "protected persons of the United States and its allies".

At least 37 lawmakers in the Republican-led House are now co-sponsoring the legislation, including Elise Stefanik, the chamber's third highest-ranking Republican.

Ms Stefanik is fresh off a visit to Israel, where she met with Mr Netanyahu, spoke at the Knesset and met with the families of hostages trapped in Gaza.

The court "equivocates a peaceful nation protecting its right to exist with radical terror groups that commit genocide", she told the BBC in a statement.

Andy Barr of Kentucky, another Republican supporting the bill, said further pursuit of the ICC's case against Israel must "be met with the full force of our sanctions".

Less clear, however, is whether Democratic lawmakers will get behind the effort.

The party's moderate and liberal wings have grappled with Mr Biden's Israel policy for months, as young progressive voters have pushed the president to more sharply criticise the Netanyahu government's operations in Gaza.

Ohio's Greg Landsman, one of a few Democrats who voted last week to reverse Mr Biden's pause on a weapons shipment to Israel, told the BBC he hopes Congress will issue a bipartisan rebuke of the ICC "to send the strongest message possible".

"The decision [to seek arrest warrants] will only further inflame tensions and divisions, embolden anti-Israel conspiracies, and ultimately, it will undermine the credibility of the ICC," he said in a statement.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson urged Chuck Schumer, the Senate's top Democrat, to sign a letter on Tuesday inviting Mr Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress.

In March, Mr Schumer called for new elections in Israel but he described the ICC's case on Monday as "reprehensible".

But some left-wing Democrats have expressed their support for the ICC's actions.

Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said the court's allegations are "significant" and the US must support its work as it has done on past occasions, including in the case of Libya.

"The application for arrest warrants is merely the beginning of a judicial process," she wrote in a statement on Monday.

"The ICC has been a functioning court – it has seen convictions, acquittals, and dismissals, as we would expect from an impartial and non-political judicial body."

It remains unclear whether any sanction efforts have yet gathered the support needed to advance through either the Republican-led House or the Democrat-controlled Senate.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday that administration officials were discussing "next steps" with lawmakers.

Watching from across the world in Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that its adversary's "attitude and willingness to use sanctions methods even against the ICC" was "more than curious".