Live Nation Trial: States To Rest Next Week

The remaining state plaintiffs in the Live Nation antitrust trial plan to rest their case next Wednesday, attorneys told a judge Thursday.

Ahead of Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino’s testimony, the lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramanian they’ll wrap up by March 25, after roughly a week and a half of testimony.

While the truncated timeline isn’t the biggest shock of the trial — it’d be hard to top the surprise settlement made between the Department of Justice and a handful of states or the disclosure of Slack messages in which Live Nation employees called customers “so stupid” — it is worth noting that when the feds were helming the case, they had planned for a far longer case-in-chief.

The state claims are narrower than those sought by the DOJ and a pretrial decision by Subramanian tightened the case further. Still, the relatively short timeline indicates, perhaps, that the states feel confident in their success.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster will, of course, get to present a defense, but it seems likely the jury will get the case far ahead of schedule, which called for the trial to wrap April 10.

In addition to Rapino — who testified throughout the morning Thursday and will return after lunch — this week has seen testimony from AEG Presents chief Jay Marciano, Live Nation’s Bob Roux, former Co-president of U.S. Concerts Mark Campana and others, including two music fans who testified to their experience using Ticketmaster.