is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.
SeatGeek was close to a deal that would bring its ticketing business to the next level. The company was in negotiations with the Dallas Cowboys, aiming to take over first-party sales at its stadium. But there was one sticking point: “the concert issue.” The team feared that if it dropped SeatGeek’s rival Ticketmaster, Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation could pull concerts from the team’s stadium, damaging an important revenue stream.
That’s how SeatGeek CEO Jack Groetzinger remembers things. The deal was ultimately successful, resulting in a primary ticketing partnership that was announced in 2018. But for a while, Groetzinger recalled on the stand in front of a Manhattan jury Friday, “the concert issue was the one thing we just couldn’t get over, and seemed like it might tank the whole process.”
During the first days of the government’s six-week antitrust trial against Live Nation-Ticketmaster, retaliation — a charge Live Nation emphatically denies — has been a core theme. Many in the industry believed Live Nation’s promoters would withhold concerts from venues that didn’t use Ticketmaster, several witnesses testified. The real or perceived threat created such fear, witnesses alleged, that some major venues would decline to switch to what they viewed as a better ticketing product, so as not to earn Live Nation’s wrath. With a settlement reportedly imminent, changes may be on the way — but not the full breakup the government put on the table during trial. The dozens of individual states involved in the case, meanwhile, will need to decide whether to push ahead.
Retaliation insurance
SeatGeek didn’t necessarily know Live Nation would strike back. But venues’ fear of losing its concerts was costing SeatGeek business, Groetzinger said. With the Cowboys deal appearing to go south, a SeatGeek employee suggested a bold idea: What if they offered retaliation insurance? The company could promise venues that if Live Nation passed them over for a concert, it would hand over enough money to cover the revenue they would have made.
The idea made Groetzinger “really uncomfortable,” he testified. SeatGeek would have to set aside a large sum of money for the insurance. Even if they never had to pay out, Groetzinger said, the company would need to make up for those funds elsewhere in the contract — in his words, “the venue gets a worse deal.” But SeatGeek’s board ultimately agreed to the idea, and it clinched the Cowboys deal. From that point on, offering retaliation insurance became an option of last resort. “It’s really scary, but if we feel that we have no choice, we’ll do it,” he said.
So far, two venues that signed up for retaliation insurance have claimed the provision was triggered — one was the Cowboys. In 2022, the team told SeatGeek they believed Live Nation passed over their stadium for a Coldplay concert. For the benefit of the relationship with SeatGeek, Groetzinger said, the Cowboys didn’t collect on the claim at the time.
The risks are even more pronounced with smaller arenas, where there are more options for artists and promoters to choose between, Groetzinger said.
Early in the week, the jury heard from two witnesses who were directly responsible for ticketing at arenas: the former CEO of Barclays Center owner BSE Global, John Abbamondi, and Mitch Helgerson, chief revenue officer for the Minnesota Wild hockey team. The Wild considered a SeatGeek offer, but Live Nation-Ticketmaster allegedly threatened to move its shows to the Target Center in nearby Minneapolis, an “almost catastrophic” (in Helgerson’s words) consequence even retaliation insurance wouldn’t fix. Barclays negotiations went better, and SeatGeek signed a seven-year deal in 2021. But quickly, everything fell apart.
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