President Donald Trump in Dearborn, Michigan, January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump and his administration attempted to let a huge corporation off the hook for monopoly allegations while no one was looking, but according to a new analysis from MS NOW, a state ruling on the matter has handed him yet another legal "faceplant."
Early last month, Trump's Justice Department moved to settle a lawsuit against Live Nation — the conglomerate with massive control over the live event and ticketing industries in the U.S. — after a Biden-era antitrust suit accused it of maintaining an illegal monopoly. The move was the latest in a long line of Trump-era policies favoring big business and its ability to take advantage of customers.
That decision to let Live Nation off easy could have been the end of it, but instead, this week, a federal jury in New York ruled that the company had, in fact, engaged in monopolistic practices. This, as reporter Helaine Olen wrote for MS NOW on Friday, meant that the case would not "end with a whimper," on account of the "egregious" facts pointing to the company's obvious wrongdoing. Furthermore, she argued, the ruling also dealt "a huge faceplant for the Trump administration."
"The Trump administration [is] doing the bidding of big business," Olen wrote. "Its settlement with Live Nation is in the same spirit as the sign-offs on mergers such as Paramount and Warner Brothers, or HP and Juniper. The judge in this case can and should scrutinize the settlement closely. Congress has the power to look into both the settlement and the mergers, and lawmakers should use that authority. At the same time, this verdict should hearten the state attorneys general who have already joined together to fight these wildly inappropriate and anticompetitive mergers."
She continued: "And, then there were the nine jury members that handed Trump and corporate America this defeat. They didn’t just deliver a verdict on Ticketmaster. They also said enough to an economy in which giant monopolies have grown and prospered at the expense of honest businesses and powerless consumers. Now it’s time for an encore performance — against all the other monopolistic deals getting waived through by this administration."
Live Nation emerged as a major monopolistic force in the live event industry when it merged with Ticketmaster in 2010. As a condition for merger approval from the Obama administration, the company had to pledge not to engage in a variety of anticompetitive practices, which, as Olen explained, they more than failed to do.
"Live Nation didn’t just fail to live up to its promise. It repeatedly, blatantly violated the agreement," she wrote. "The states argued employees of the newly combined company, which controls an astonishing 86% of the concert ticket market and almost three-quarters of the overall event ticketing market, began threatening venues with retaliation unless they used Ticketmaster. Live Nation executives actually boasted in writing about ripping off customers. One employee, who is now a ticketing executive, joked that an increase in parking fees for customers was 'robbing them blind baby. That’s how we do.'”
