Resale Ticket Buyers Ordered Into Arbitration in Antitrust Case Against Live Nation

A federal judge in New York has ruled that concertgoers who purchased Ticketmaster tickets on the secondary market must take their antitrust claims to arbitration rather than pursue them in court, siding with Live Nation's argument that an arbitration clause buried in its terms of service is legally enforceable.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, who also oversees the government monopolization case against Live Nation, issued the order on Monday, granting the company's request to compel arbitration for three consumers who had bought resold tickets through the platform.

In his ruling, the judge explained that all three customers had agreed to arbitrate any disputes when they accepted Ticketmaster's terms of use, and that those terms specifically delegate the question of whether a dispute is even arbitrable to the arbitrator itself, not to a court. Since none of the plaintiffs successfully demonstrated that this delegation clause was unenforceable, the case could not move forward in federal court.

The underlying allegations in the case closely mirror claims being pursued by government enforcers at both the federal and state level, who accuse Live Nation of monopolizing significant portions of the live entertainment industry in the years following its 2010 acquisition of Ticketmaster.

The U.S. Department of Justice settled its portion of that case just one week into trial earlier this year. However, enforcers representing 33 states and the District of Columbia chose to continue pursuing their claims and ultimately secured a jury verdict against the company.

Live Nation is now appealing that verdict, even as state enforcers prepare for upcoming remedies proceedings where they intend to ask Judge Subramanian to order the company to sell off Ticketmaster entirely.

A related case brought by buyers of primary tickets, as opposed to resold ones, remains pending in California federal court. That case took a very different turn in 2024, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling finding that Live Nation's arbitration agreement in that context was unconscionable.

The appellate court's concerns centered largely on Live Nation's decision to switch arbitration providers from JAMS to New Era ADR, a newer arbitration firm whose procedures appeared structured to discourage mass consumer arbitration claims. Live Nation subsequently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up that case, but the justices declined to hear it this past October.

In the current secondary-market case, the plaintiffs raised similar concerns about Live Nation's use of New Era ADR, going so far as to allege that the company had worked alongside its outside counsel at Latham & Watkins to help draft New Era's arbitration rules in a way that favored Live Nation. Judge Subramanian rejected that argument, noting that the California court had already found no concrete evidence supporting the claim that Latham & Watkins played any role in shaping New Era's rules, and that the Ninth Circuit never addressed the issue in its own ruling.

According to Monday's order, none of the documents the plaintiffs pointed to actually showed Latham's involvement in drafting the rules, let alone at Live Nation's direction. The judge characterized what had once seemed like a legitimate concern as ultimately unsupported once the discovery process was complete, concluding there was no evidence of impropriety.

The judge also pointed to meaningful differences between this case and the California litigation, noting that New Era's arbitration rules have since been revised. Live Nation agreed to drop two of the more contentious provisions that had troubled the Ninth Circuit, leaving what the judge described as a fairly standard arbitration framework once separated from mass-arbitration protocols and certain appeal mechanisms.

Two of the plaintiffs, both of whom had purchased their tickets through StubHub, additionally argued that they shouldn't be held to Live Nation's terms of service because they'd effectively signed under duress, claiming their tickets were held hostage until they agreed to the company's conditions.

The judge disagreed, noting that the consumers had actually agreed to Live Nation's terms multiple times, including whenever they logged into Ticketmaster or made purchases, not solely at the moment they claimed a specific resold ticket. He further found that missing out on a concert ticket doesn't rise to the level of duress under the law, pointing out that legitimate duress claims typically involve circumstances far more severe, such as a company being pushed to the edge of bankruptcy.

The order noted that the plaintiffs failed to cite any precedent where a court applying California law found duress under stakes as comparatively low as losing access to a concert ticket.