Two former top antitrust attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice who were central to its case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster had strong words for the department following its abrupt settlement with the company just one week after the trial — which saw the DOJ and over 30 states accusing the company of monopolistic business practices — began in March.
“When I stood up and gave the opening statement in this case, I believed that we were going to win,” David Dahlquist, the former Deputy Director of Litigation and who led the case against, told the audience at the National Independent Venues Alliance’s annual conference, which began Monday in Minneapolis. “And when the settlement was entered, I still believed that we were going to win … I knew the case, I knew the witnesses, I knew the evidence.”
However, the case, filed under the Biden Administration and years in the making, was suddenly settled after a closed-door meeting DOJ officials and Live Nation, enraging U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramamian, who presided over the trial and was blindsided by the settlement.
“From all sides the parties conduct here strains the bounds of responsible conduct and is inconsistent” with the principles in of the court, he said, as 27 of the states that were also named in the suit elected to continue.
Dahlquist confirmed earlier reports that he and his team had not been part of the negotiations that led to the settlement, which likely means that the settlement was struck by officials at the highest levels of the administration — the Wall Street Journal alleges that the president Trump personally intervened.
“I did not have, or had not seen, the settlement terms until the morning that we showed up in front of the judge, [the morning] that it was announced,” Dahlquist said. “I was neither asked nor did I provide input into that settlement that was ultimately entered into by the Department of Justice. We stayed on, myself and the trial team … we helped the transition, everything to the states, to make sure that they could go forward.”
And go forward they did – 27 states continued the suit and, in April, won: a jury concluded that Live Nation and Ticketmaster hold an illegal monopoly on the U.S. ticketing market.
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Alford said that Live Nation’s 2010 merger with Ticketmaster was a flawed proposition from the start. “The promises of 16 years of compliance have done nothing to fix the [ticketing and live music] market, and so we’re in a very unusual situation where we’ve had 16 years of failed promises and that I think will weigh into the judge’s determination,” Alford pointed out, referencing the 2010 consent decree between the government and Live Nation that allowed for its merger with Ticketmaster. Subramamian has yet to decide on what changes he will require from Live Nation/Ticketmaster for operating an illegal monopoly.
Alford, a Republican, wrote in a prepared statement last month that it “is deeply troubling that the Antitrust Division is engaged in selective non-prosecution of political allies in critical cases such as Live Nation/Ticketmaster. Such a practice has become all too common in other cases as well. Selective non-prosecution of antitrust cases will lead to anticompetitive mergers, collusion between competitors, and monopoly abuses. It should not be this way.”
This morning, Alford explained: “I was fired [from the DoJ] in July of 2025 for standing up to inappropriate lobbying … we wanted to resolve these cases on the merits, [former Assistant Attorney General and antitrust chief] Gail Slater and I and the other deputies. There was lobbying that was occurring … in the Live Nation/Ticketmaster case. We stood up to that and said ‘That’s wrong’ and, by doing that, we were fired,” going on to say he thinks the DoJ would not have dropped its case if not for those lobbying efforts.
“Those are heroes,” NIVA executive director Stephen Parker said of Dahlquist and Alford at the close of the morning session.
From Variety US