Michael Rapino
Live Nation
Live Nation Chief Executive Officer Michael Rapino told John Abbamondi, the former CEO of the BSE Global, which owns the Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, that it would be “tough to deliver concerts” if the arena switched from Live Nation’s Ticketmaster to SeatGeek. Live Nation might instead send concerts to the new UBS Arena, Rapino said on the call, which Abbamondi said he took as a “threat.”
After Barclays switched to SeatGeek in 2021, Abbamondi said concerts once scheduled there moved elsewhere, including one by pop star Billie Eilish, which was rebooked to nearby UBS Arena. Live Nation said Eilish and her team requested the change, according to Abbamondi, but when a Barclays staffer called for more information, they were told that Live Nation requested the switch.
company’s concert promotion business works in tandem with Ticketmaster to ensure venue operators do business with the entire company. After switching to SeatGeek, Live Nation reduced the number of concerts its promoters put on at Barclays
Live Nation forced venues into signing long-term, exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster.
Under its agreements with Barclays, Live Nation had to make its best effort to promote a minimum of 25 concerts a year in the arena and exclusively sell tickets to programming at the arena, including basketball games and concerts.
terms of the ticketing agreement “unfavorable” to Barclays in part because they were required to pay $2.50 per ticket to Live Nation, even on events run by competing promoters
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Michael Rapino is CEO of Live Nation, which is monopolistic in sense that it is both music concert tour promoter and ticket distributor via subsidiary Ticketmaster.
