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This is not a reasonable take on what's actually happening. It's never been a reasonable take, but posting this today after Live Nation has literally just been found liable by a jury shows deep confusion.

The ticket prices are not high because of market realities. They're high because of illegal monopoly behavior that inflates costs and then steals the money and gives it to Michael Rapino and his friends. The behavior of Live Nation has been shown to be much closer to organized crime than what most people think of as standard business practice.

There's extensive on-the-record testimony and an official federal court verdict backing up my side of this argument.

[0] https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2026/04/20/capping-resale/

kevinsync 52 days ago

Re: LN, I agree 100% with the evidence presented in, and outcome of, that trial; Live Nation absolutely deserves the verdict they received and it's amazing it took this long to get it. I just don't fully buy the idea that they (and they alone) are the reasons that tickets are priced the way that they are.

I guess I'm in the Lefsetz School of Thought [0][1] about it all (and I know, he's a polarizing personality, so I get it when people think he's full of shit), but I also think that two things can be right at the same time (Rapino and gang are criminals, ticket prices cost a lot because that's what they cost)

Maybe I'm wrong! I don't have much skin in this game man, I just personally find that his takes mirror what I see happening in real life to friends and colleagues who are artists, promoters and venue operators.

[1] https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2026/04/15/live-nation-loses/

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/LYV/live-nation-en...

Livenation’s profit margins are not very impressive for a business that supposedly has pricing power.

Are you suggesting Livenation’s leaders (Rapino, etc) are stealing from the other shareholders?

Looks like Liberty Live Group owns 30% of Livenation? And Rapino owns less than 2%, per Yahoo Finance.

https://www.libertyliveholdings.com/about

Page 31 of Livenation’s 2025 10-K shows $25B revenue, $19B direct operating expenses, and $4B selling, general, and admin expenses. I wonder how much of the expenses is not going to performers and the expenses of operating venues.

https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/sec-filings/an...

reactordev 52 days ago

This is why they have gotten away with it for so long. It looks legit, until you realize they also OWN all those venue companies they are paying too. Not to mention Ticketmaster. The web is so deep that looking at just one entity makes it look like they have low margins and are just operating in this space, it’s not true at all.

They own StubHub so they’ll buy the tickets from themselves and “resell” them on StubHub for 5x-10x because people will pay it for a top line performer. It’s been well documented over the years if you do any kind of digging.

Shuffling money around between subsidiaries does not matter because it would still be reported on the same 10-K for the parent company (Livenation), and the revenues and expenses amongst itself cancel out.

For example, you don’t report revenue or expense from moving money from your right pocket to your left pocket.

greyw 51 days ago

That doesnt matter for the 10-k report. Its a fully consolidated financial statement. They have absolutely trash operating margins. If you look at their customers (artists and visitors) you see why

sdellis 52 days ago

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Rapino is stealing from shareholders. We don't know how that money is spent or disbursed. What is clear from the case and settlement is that they were illegally maintaining a monopoly in the live entertainment industry that had stifled innovation and competition, and resulted in higher ticket prices for music fans.

The claim was that Livenation (or a few insiders) is benefiting from the higher prices. But the financials (low profit margins) don’t show that (absent fraud).

In which case, the benefit of the higher prices would be going to (some) performers. Which supports the claim that Livenation is useful as a punching bag for the most popular performers.

There's the occasional top performer that's in on it for sure. But yes, the few insiders are benefiting from higher prices.

I know these people personally. I'm telling you that it's true. I can think of one example where all the insiders created a startup in the ticketing space that had no reason to exist, really, and nothing worth buying solely so that they could acquire it and all the insiders could profit off of it. Lo and behold, COVID came along and made it so their plan made even less sense, and they just ran with it anyways. Money went straight from the stock market into their pockets.

There's a million examples, but again, a lot of the stuff is on the record. I'm sure Rapino is giving money to shareholders for the most part (being one is a pretty relevant part of that for him obviously) but he's doing it via illegal actions. He has made himself a billionaire in the process.

You can hedge however you want on that, but it's horrible and bad and your posts sound like they're defending it or acting like it's natural or normal in some way. It's not mitigated by the fact that someone like Ari Emanuel or a few guys in Nashville had their hand in the cookie jar too. Victims are millions of normal Americans, like me and you, and basically every working musician, except for a few special people at the top.

reactordev 52 days ago

Watch this: https://youtu.be/u--se25_px8

Even Coachella, which was supposed to be an F-U to high ticket prices and Record Label red tape, is now $5,000/ticket.

> Livenation’s profit margins are not very impressive for a business that supposedly has pricing power.

Being skeptical of reported profit is a prerequisite for any conversation about entertainment industry accounting.

> Are you suggesting Livenation’s leaders (Rapino, etc) are stealing from the other shareholders?

Of course I am. These guys are basically mobsters.

> Page 31 of Livenation’s 2025 10-K shows $25B revenue, $19B direct operating expenses, and $4B selling, general, and admin expenses. I wonder how much of the expenses is not going to performers and the expenses of operating venues.

Lots. There is on-the-record testimony and hard evidence in the docket. They inflated prices and faked costs. They shuffled money between entities.

There's tons and tons of reporting, testimony and an official record of the federal courts of the United States of America, all covering these issues. You don't have to read that stuff, but if you haven't got any actual understanding of this issue, there's no reason to post about it.

This organization has been a willful, blatant lawbreaker for decades and a leech on an entire industry. I've seen it first hand. But again, you don't have to believe me. It's proven in a court.

They quite literally bribed their way out of this federal case but they somehow managed to get blindsided by the state AG's sticking around. It's only this miscalculation that's caused them to suffer any consequences at all for basically the first time in history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Malone

> Being skeptical of reported profit is a prerequisite for any conversation about entertainment industry accounting.

If you are referring to Hollywood accounting, that has nothing to do with audited figured in SEC filings. Hollywood accounting is just poorly written contracts litigated in civil court.

Misstated financials in SEC filings are a criminal offense, which obviously could be happening, but I have yet to see any evidence.

> There's tons and tons of reporting, testimony and an official record of the federal courts of the United States of America, all covering these issues. You don't have to read that stuff, but if you haven't got any actual understanding of this issue, there's no reason to post about it.

So you are alleging the federal courts and prosecutors know about all of this fraud, provably, and are not indicting anyone. Which, of course, could be true due to corruption. I just haven’t seen a reputable article connecting all the dots, which is odd because it seems like the type of thing journalists like to publish.

Also, seems like the other Livenation shareholders would not like to be defrauded, so wouldn’t they be at least suing Livenation for their missing profits?

30% of livenation is owned by another publicly listed company, with majority voting shares held by this guy:

He seems influential enough to not want to take missing profits on the chin. Or is he in on the fraud too?

You see where this starts needing a decent amount of evidence without sounding like a conspiracy theory.

https://www.econlib.org/bills-on-the-sidewalk/#:~:text=Kevin...

Yes, of course. They are all in on the fraud.

This is like the equivalent of this economist joke:

Has anyone not noticed that the Justice Department has literally been for sale? That we have stopped prosecuting white-collar crime in this country for a generation or two?

There's always a way. They hire the former prosecutor, they employ the children of congressmen. The money permeates everybody and everything. It's a criminal organization. It's obvious to anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention.

The idea that you can tell that people aren't committing white-collar crime because they haven't been prosecuted is a hilarious assumption.

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's right out in the open. They think they won't ever face real actual personal consequences. They're probably right.

reactordev 52 days ago

1000% this.