I'm Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 14 minutes.

What happened to net neutrality?

In 2017, “the end of the internet as we know it” seemed imminent. The Federal Communications Commission was preparing to vote on a rollback of net neutrality protections, and politicians, celebrities, free speech advocates, and millions of everyday people rallied together against the repeal effort. Despite the public uproar, net neutrality rules went away and haven’t been back since. So what happened to claims that the internet would be forever changed?

In tomorrow’s Friday edition, we’re publishing the third installment of our “What happened to…?” series, where we revisit news cycles from years past that carried dire warnings of major societal shifts but quietly disappeared.

Quick hits.

1. A preliminary Pentagon inquiry into the February 28 missile strike that hit an elementary school in Iran, killing approximately 175 people, reportedly found that the United States was likely responsible for the strike. The investigation is still ongoing. (The report)
2. The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that its member countries will release 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency stocks in an effort to ease oil prices that have sharply increased due to the war in Iran and attacks on oil vessels in the Gulf. (The announcement) On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the United States intends to release 172 million barrels of oil as part of the IEA’s collective effort. (The comments)
3. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the consumer price index increased 2.4% on an annual basis in February and rose 0.3% from the month prior. (The numbers)
4. Multiple outlets reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Joint Terrorism Task Force sent memos to California police departments in late February, warning of Iranian ambitions to launch drone attacks against unspecified targets in California in response to a war with the United States. (The reports)
5. Michigan-based medical device company Stryker announced that it experienced a cyberattack possibly linked to a pro-Iranian group, affecting many employees’ cell phones and computers and leaving them unable to connect to company networks. (The attack)

Today’s topic.

The Live Nation settlement. On Monday, Live Nation Entertainment Inc. reached a settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) a week into its antitrust trial. The government had argued that the company’s subsidiary Ticketmaster constituted an illegal monopoly over the ticketing industry. As conditions for the settlement, Ticketmaster agreed to provide a standalone ticketing system for third-party use, divest from exclusive arrangements with up to 13 amphitheaters, reserve 50% of tickets for nonexclusive venues, and cap ticketing service fees at 15% for events in amphitheaters it owns. 

Of the 40 state attorneys general who signed onto the suit, 28 indicated they’ll continue fighting at the state level. U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York Arun Subramanian, who is presiding over the case, gave the holdouts until the end of the week to negotiate; if no deal is reached, the trial could resume as early as Monday.

Back up: Live Nation is a global entertainment conglomerate that owns and operates concert venues and manages artists. In 2010, Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster, a ticket sales and distribution company that dominates the primary ticketing market for live events, sparking criticism that the new company constituted a monopoly. The DOJ launched an investigation into the company in 2022. At the time, public frustration with the company was growing after high traffic for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour crashed Ticketmaster’s systems and led Ticketmaster to cancel the general admissions sale, leaving millions of fans locked out. In May 2024, the DOJ — joined by 30 state attorneys general — formally filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation. The government’s initial preferred remedy was a structural breakup, forcing Live Nation to divest Ticketmaster entirely.

The settlement also includes an eight-year extension of the company’s consent decree with the DOJ, which bars Live Nation from threatening to restrict concerts from venues that don’t sign deals with Ticketmaster. No financial component is included as part of the DOJ settlement itself, but Live Nation created a $280 million fund to address individual states’ damages claims.

Justice Department officials said Monday’s proposed settlement is designed to drive down ticket prices and give consumers more choice. However, the DOJ announced the settlement in court during a live trial without alerting the judge or jury, creating a chaotic courtroom scene and sparking criticism from attorneys general and lawmakers. Judge Subramanian said the announcement showed “absolute disrespect for the court, the jury, and the entire process.” 

The state attorneys general who are continuing the suit at the state level publicly criticized the deal. “The settlement… fails to address the monopoly at the center of this case, and would benefit Live Nation at the expense of consumers,” New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) said. “Our resolve has not wavered,” said Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R). “We are proud to stand with a powerful core of conservative AGs and bipartisan partners from across the country committed to continuing the fight.”

We’ll cover what the left and right are saying about the lawsuit and the settlement below, followed by Senior Editor Will Kaback’s take.

What the left is saying.

• The left broadly criticizes the settlement, saying it doesn’t address the company’s monopolistic structure.
• Some highlight the ties between Live Nation and the Trump administration.
• Others argue the agreement includes meaningful concessions to Ticketmaster’s competitors.

In The Sling, Ron Knox said the “settlement solves nothing.”

“In 2010, antitrust enforcers from the Obama administration ignored the chorus of music industry and consumer critics warning about the unchecked power of a merged Ticketmaster and Live Nation. They approved the deal over these objections, subject to some promises that the combined company wouldn’t force venues to use Ticketmaster in order to host Live Nation artists and tours (or what antitrust recognizes as a ‘tie-in’),” Knox wrote. “Eight years later, Live Nation was found to have violated that remedy so flagrantly that even the first Trump administration was forced to take action. But rather than sue the company to break it up, they made Live Nation double-promise that it wouldn’t abuse its monopoly again. Nothing changed.”

“This settlement appears destined to fail as well, for the reasons conduct remedies often do. The proposed behavioral fixes to Live Nation’s monopoly power do nothing to address the structure of the company, which is the thing that gives it the power and motivation to dominate every corner of the live music industry,” Knox said. “So long as Live Nation controls Ticketmaster, it will want to compel the many hundreds of major artists it manages and the tours it organizes to use Ticketmaster. The milquetoast guardrails the settlement creates around venue and artist choice in ticketing platforms do nothing to change the interrelated nature of Live Nation’s business.”

In BIG, Matt Stoller wrote that Trump “pardoned Ticketmaster when no one was looking.”

“The Antitrust Division abruptly announced that it has reached a deal with Live Nation/Ticketmaster, which led to the company’s stock skyrocketing on the news. But then the state enforcers, who are also plaintiffs, said they would not be sandbagged, and pledged to continue the trial,” Stoller said. “This kind of split, in a monopolization case, is exceedingly rare, and it never happens in a single day in court.” 

“Broadly, this consent decree would be the third Ticketmaster ‘deal’ since 2010, and none of them have delivered competition to the market. So there’s no reason to assume this one will either,” Stoller wrote. “Ultimately, hanging over these proceedings is the specter of corruption. Live Nation retained well-known MAGA lobbyist and fixer Mike Davis, who was able to force the previous antitrust chief, Gail Slater, from office. Another Trump lobbyist, Kellyanne Conway, works for Ticketmaster. And the company donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural.”

In Slate, Nitish Pahwa suggested “Ticketmaster’s grip on live concerts is finally starting to break.”

“However disappointing the initial result may be for everyone who desired some accountability for Ticketmaster’s myriad sins (crashing during ‘Eras’ tour sales, overcharging venues and attendees, teaming up with scalpers), the fight is not over,” Pahwa said. “And the current deal also comes with notable concessions that clamp down on some of Live Nation’s most risible business practices. Bit by bit, the near-unanimous public antipathy toward Ticketmaster is gradually transforming audiences’ ticket-buying experience for the better — in large part by opening up access to competitors eager to demonstrate that they’re not the dreaded, hated Ticketmaster.”

“Another bonus of this settlement: Major venues — whether or not they’re owned by or contracted with Live Nation — will no longer have to direct customers to Ticketmaster’s interface by default, to the advantage of upstart ticketing companies like Dice, which is often praised by its partners for using extra guardrails to secure against resale price gouging and fraudulent bot-driven transactions,” Pahwa wrote. “That indicates another key bit of the fallout: further empowerment of the anti-Ticketmaster movement.”

What the right is saying.

• The right questions the government’s antitrust allegations against Live Nation.
• Some say the company shouldn’t bear the blame for high ticket prices.
• Others argue the deal could leave concertgoers worse off than before.

In May 2024, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote “antitrust comes for Live Nation.”

“Look past the government’s legal theatrics; its essential complaint is that Live Nation Entertainment is too big. But where’s the antitrust violation?” the board asked. “Most economists agree that vertical integration typically produces efficiencies that benefit consumers by reducing what’s known as ‘double marginalization.’ Yet DOJ portrays Live Nation’s use of profitable businesses to subsidize its lower-margin businesses as an antitrust violation. If this were true, thousands of businesses would be breaking the law.”

“Ticketmaster takes a roughly 5% to 7% cut on a ticket sale, and its fees are lower than those of competitors. DOJ says some Live Nation business lines generate up to a 70% profit margin. Yet Live Nation and Ticketmaster boast a combined 1.4% annual net profit,” the board wrote. “This hardly demonstrates monopoly power. Antitrust is popular in today’s anti-business era, especially when the Attorney General can denounce high ticket prices. But press releases won’t win in court.”

In Reason, Jack Nicastro said “Live Nation settled its lawsuit with the feds.”

“Following its 2010 acquisition of Ticketmaster, Live Nation became ‘the world’s leading live entertainment ticketing sales…company,’ according to the Justice Department… Given this massive market share, one might assume that Live Nation is responsible for jacking up ticket prices to concerts,” Nicastro wrote. “But this isn’t how the primary ticket market works. Performers themselves set the price, which ticketing companies sell for a fee of about 7 percent of the ticket’s face value. Even including venue and ticket fees, which increase the all-in ticket price by as much as 30 percent, there are far more tickets demanded than available at this low price.”

“The Justice Department might notch Live Nation’s settlement as a win in the war on affordability, but as long as performers price tickets markedly below what their fans are willing to pay, scalpers will be strongly incentivized to purchase these tickets at this below-market rate and get them in the hands of the fans who value them the most,” Nicastro said. “The answer is not more government intervention, but allowing prices to work.”

The Washington Post editorial board told readers not to “expect cheaper concert tickets.” 

“The Justice Department settled with the entertainment conglomerate Live Nation this week to end a lawsuit that should never have been brought. It’s unclear whether consumers will be any better off after this lengthy legal fight, but that’s nothing new in the world of antitrust,” the board wrote. “Ticketmaster will give other companies access to parts of its own backend technological systems to make it easier for venues to sell through competing providers. And Live Nation is going to let competitors share what have been exclusive arrangements with 13 amphitheaters.”

“Venues should be able to freely opt in to contracts with ticketing providers of their choice. But government compelling a private company to share its proprietary technology platforms with competitors will have unpredictable results,” the board said. “Concert-goers could end up worse off if new entrants use the tickets being sold at retail price to direct customers toward resale markets that offer seats at significantly higher price points. Live Nation’s critics are mad that it wasn’t broken up, and no doubt the company is miffed at being arbitrarily hamstrung. The only people walking away happy now are lawyers and lobbyists.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where we give ourselves space to share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Live Nation has engaged in shady — if not illegal — practices, and this settlement will address some key harms. 
• However, this case won’t resolve deeper issues with live events. 
• Out-of-control ticket prices are ultimately a textbook case of supply and demand. 

Senior Editor Will Kaback: I came of age as a concertgoer in the post-Covid world, so I don’t have a strong sense of the “before” times. Now that I’m out of school and living in New York City, I attend a lot more live events. Even without a baseline to compare it to, in just the past few years, ticket prices seem to have shot up, the buying process has become more convoluted, and the event experience itself is more corporate and less human. 

When I read about the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Live Nation back in 2024, I was excited by the prospect of change. Live Nation and Ticketmaster are ubiquitous in all things events. It seems obvious that they are, at minimum, approaching monopoly status and abusing their growing leverage. Industry experts, lawmakers and reporters confirmed that sense, and after the 2022 Taylor Swift debacle, an array of Republican and Democratic attorneys general signing onto the DOJ’s suit looked a lot like responsive democratic governance. 

That suit has now produced a settlement agreement that reportedly includes up to $280 million toward damage claims and changes to the company’s most pernicious alleged practices. I support this outcome and think the deal will rein in some of Live Nation’s worst behavior, to the benefit of artists, venues, and fans alike. But I also think Live Nation has become a punching bag for all the things we dislike about live events, and the tendency to blame them for everything wrong with the industry obscures a key issue they don’t control: demand. 

First, the benefits of the settlement. In 2024, the DOJ accused Live Nation of a host of anti-competitive practices, all of which plausibly damage the event experience. In simple terms, the company allegedly drove up prices and boxed out competitors by amassing control over venues, tours, and ticket sales. The numbers speak for themselves: Under the DOJ’s definition of the events market, Live Nation controls over 80% of major concert venues’ primary ticketing for concerts and about 60% of concert promotions at major U.S. venues. It also owns or controls more than 265 venues outright. 

That degree of control makes the situation ripe for abuse. In one example cited in the suit, Live Nation allegedly colluded with venue development company Oak View Group (OVG) to minimize competition and maintain leverage over artists. In 2016, according to emails obtained by the DOJ, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino emailed OVG CEO Timothy Leiweke, seemingly warning against taking on an artist that Live Nation had previously promoted and suggesting it would allow the artist’s agent to play the companies off each other. Leiweke replied, “Our guys got [a] bit ahead. All know we don’t promote and we only do tours with Live Nation.” When a similar issue arose in 2022, Leiweke told Rapino, “We have never promoted without you. Won't,” adding, “I never want to be competitors.”

In its rebuttal to the DOJ suit, Live Nation said that OVG is a venue manager, not a promoter, so a mutually beneficial agreement between the companies is reasonable (and legal). In theory, that’s a fair point. But the emails suggest a deeper relationship wherein OVG acted as an unofficial arm of Live Nation in return for exclusive business arrangements. Such arrangements would strip leverage from both artists and fans — and could constitute violations of the 1914 Clayton Act. 

Monetarily, the settlement is a slap on the wrist. The $280 million fund amounts to 1% of Live Nation’s $25.1 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2025. Yes, it’s also about 40% of its $690 million profit for FY 2025, but they get to keep their business whole and avoid what could have been a crippling cost if they had lost at trial. However, the changes to how Live Nation can interact with other players in the event space are significant. The deal would reportedly end its exclusive relationships with venues (allowing multiple vendors to sell tickets for an event) and permit touring artists performing in Live Nation-owned amphitheaters to use non-Live Nation promotion companies. Both of these reforms take direct aim at monopolistic practices and seem like wins for artists and venues (though, for what it’s worth, many venues prefer to have exclusive partnerships with ticket platforms like Ticketmaster for simplicity).

But the biggest victory, in my opinion, is the agreement to cap service fees at 15% of a ticket’s face value. Though this only applies to amphitheaters that Live Nation owns, operates or controls, the company owns many of the most popular amphitheaters, so many consumers should pay lower fees. For reference, I recently bought tickets through Ticketmaster to see one of my favorite artists (Rüfüs Du Sol) perform at a Live Nation-owned amphitheater. The tickets themselves were $64.50 each with a $19.25 service fee tacked on. That’s 30% of the face price! Ticketmaster doesn’t keep 100% of that fee — a portion goes to the venues to support their operations — but revenue from fees is a major part of Live Nation’s business model. 

Under this settlement, that fee would be halved, meaningfully lowering the cost to attend many shows and dampening the frustration of extra costs in the checkout process. It’s also a major concession for Live Nation, given how much money it makes from these fees. 

Again, the core tenets of this deal contain wins for venues, artists and fans, and it would represent a step toward a healthier live events space. But I don’t think it will bring down event prices or make the ticket-buying process less stressful. 

For all the talk of the pandemic leaving us more isolated and introverted, demand for in-person experiences has boomed. If you’ve participated in concert presales recently, you’ve probably witnessed this demand firsthand; for the show I referenced above, over 60,000 people were with me in the ticket queue (for a venue with a 27,500-person capacity). 

And, hey, that’s great. I love that people want to get together to dance and listen to music, and I love that it means more support for amazing artists of all stripes (not just Taylor Swift and Harry Styles). But demand is outstripping supply, and supply is inherently limited by venues’ capacity and finite tour dates. I don’t think any government intervention can change this reality.

One possible way to address affordability is to crack down on the ticket resale market, which has become a diseased husk of bot activity. Maine recently enacted a first-of-its-kind law that bans ticket purchasers from using bots to buy tickets in bulk and caps the markup price that resellers can apply to tickets on the secondary market at 10%. I’ll be curious to see what effect the law has on ticket prices, and whether other states follow suit. 

Bluntly, though, I don’t think laws like this are the answer, either. The resale market has grown so big because people are willing to pay for these tickets, even at massive markups. We simply haven’t hit a point where enough people decide they can’t afford a ticket for an event they want to attend to bring demand in equilibrium with supply (or close to it). Putting limits on resale prices might bring down the average cost of tickets, but I suspect it will just make live events inaccessible to everyone except those lucky enough to be at the front of the virtual queue when tickets are released. 

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but high prices are the cost of making tickets accessible to the people who want them most. And that will remain true no matter how big a fine Live Nation pays, how many reforms it agrees to, or — in the most extreme outcome — if it’s forced to split off from Ticketmaster. Demand is demand.

So, yes, this settlement addresses real problems that should lead to tangible improvements at several levels of the events industry, but it’s not a silver bullet. 

Take the survey: What do you think of the settlement? Let us know.

Disagree? That's okay. Our opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.

Our latest episode of Suspension of the Rules.

On this week’s episode of Suspension of the Rules, Isaac, Ari and Kmele talk about whether Americans are actually paying attention to the war in Iran, if and when Trump will exit, and the “Israel” of it all.

Your questions, answered.

Q: Hey, why is The Washington Post editorial board listed under “What the right is saying” today? Didn’t you previously argue that they should still be categorized under “the left”?

— Anticipated reader question

Tangle: Last October, we answered a reader question about our rationale for continuing to categorize commentary from The Washington Post editorial board under the left, despite recent shakeups inside the paper’s opinion section. We acknowledged those changes, but noted that the major media bias evaluators still gave them a “left” rating, and the editorial board was still publishing columns that could reasonably be construed as center-left. 

Candidly, even when we wrote that we had our doubts. Those doubts manifested as a kind of paralysis within our editorial team (highlighted in our “leaked” Slack transcripts), and we haven’t included The Post’s editorial board in either the right or left sections since October 7, even though we still refer to their commentary in our daily research. 

Today’s edition forced our hand, and we’re glad it did. We found exactly three opinion pieces from conservative writers on the Live Nation case, but only if we counted The Post’s editorial board. In our discussion on how to proceed, two key points swayed us toward recategorizing them. 

One, the board has been writing more overtly conservative columns in the last few months. In October, many of their pieces aligned with a moderate or center-left view; today, their writing is more tailored toward principled conservative arguments. They still criticize both sides, but those critiques are exclusively rooted in anti-regulation, anti-tax, pro-market fundamentals. 

Two, the media-bias reviewers are out of date or cast too wide a net. AllSides last reviewed The Post in January 2025, before Post owner Jeff Bezos announced the opinion section would shift its focus. Media Bias/Fact Check last reviewed the paper in October 2024. AdFontes maintains an up-to-date review, but bases it on the entirety of The Post’s coverage — not just its opinion page. However, its most recent review of an individual editorial board article rated the piece as “skews right.” Back in October, we missed this nuance and put more weight on the media-bias reviewers than we should have. 

Going forward, we feel comfortable defending the decision to move the editorial board to the right, and you can expect to see them reappear in the newsletter. 

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

In January, a whistleblower filed a complaint with the Social Security Administration (SSA) inspector general, alleging that a former DOGE employee said he had access to two highly sensitive databases and planned to share the information with his private employer. The inspector general has opened an investigation into the disclosure, sharing the complaint with members of Congress and the Government Accountability Office. The complaint alleges that the former DOGE employee claimed to possess SSA data on more than 500 million living and dead Americans. The Washington Post has the story.

Numbers.

We're skipping today's Numbers section to make space for our main story.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the U.S.–Canada trade war.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the Georgia special election.
• Nothing to do with politics: A Japanese artist’s unique and captivating giant balloon animal sculptures.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,888 readers responded to our survey on the February jobs report with 57% saying the report shows the economy is weak. “The economy has a concerning cough, but it remains to be seen whether it’s allergies or TB,” one respondent said. “Relax, it’s just one month’s data. Give it more time before declaring disaster or victory,” said another.

Have a nice day.

In the Chicago-area retirement community Sunrise of Crystal Lake, a handful of residents have found a new way to stay active and creative in their old age. They’re members of the “Rolling Scones” cooking club, and they gather every Saturday to cook together. “I get to feel like I’m being creative again, because, well, when my husband got sick, I had to just walk past my sewing room and leave all the projects I had done and cook for him and take care of him before we came here,” club member Nancy Rieck said. “This creative need that I have is being fulfilled by creating salads.” TODAY has the story.