The Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition is asking a federal judge to reject the DOJ's proposed Live Nation settlement, a deal Rhode Island's attorney general walked away from before winning a jury verdict. A close read of the judgment shows its 15 percent fee cap would not reach Providence's AMP.
Uprise RI · Kaelen Valeborn · September 9, 2026
The Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition is asking a federal judge to reject the DOJ's proposed Live Nation settlement, a deal Rhode Island's attorney general walked away from before winning a jury verdict. A close read of the judgment shows its 15 percent fee cap would not reach Providence's AMP.
Rhode Island was a plaintiff against Live Nation and helped win an April jury verdict, yet the federal settlement under review would leave Ticketmaster inside Live Nation, pay nothing to Rhode Island, and leave AMP facility and service fees uncapped.
Fifteen percent. That is the number the Justice Department and Live Nation both reach for when they describe the proposed settlement now sitting in front of a federal judge in Manhattan, and it is the number most likely to catch the eye of anyone who has stared at a checkout screen and watched a $60 ticket become $84. I read the proposed final judgment to see where that cap lands. It applies to Ticketmaster service fees on tickets sold at amphitheaters Live Nation owns, operates or controls. The document's own definition of "Ticket Service Fees" excludes venue and facility fees, credit-card fees, payment-processing fees and optional add-ons. And the Amica Mutual Pavilion, the Providence venue named in the judgment's schedule of Major Concert Venues, is listed there as an arena.
A fee cap that skips the facility fee, at a class of venue that does not include the AMP. That is the fine print behind the headline number.
It is also a fair place to enter the fight that escalated yesterday, when the Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition announced it had filed a public comment on September 4 urging U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian to reject the deal outright. The coalition's release calls the proposal "corrupted," "impotent" and "unlawfully disclosed." Those are the coalition's words, not the court's, and the judge has not ruled. But the argument underneath the adjectives is one Rhode Island's own attorney general made six months ago, with his feet.
Rhode Island already walked away from this deal
Peter Neronha joined the federal-state lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster when it was filed on May 23, 2024. The complaint alleged monopolization across ticketing, promotion and amphitheater markets and asked, among other things, for a court order splitting Ticketmaster off from Live Nation. When the Justice Department and Live Nation announced a settlement term sheet on March 9 — one week into a jury trial — Neronha said the deal did not adequately remedy the alleged harms and that Rhode Island would keep litigating alongside the other holdout states.
They did. On April 15, the state coalition won its case . According to the New York attorney general's account of the verdict, the jury found that Ticketmaster maintained a monopoly in primary ticketing for major concert venues, that Live Nation held a monopoly involving large amphitheaters, and that Live Nation unlawfully required some artists playing its amphitheaters to buy its promotion services. Neronha said the outcome could mean better ticket prices, more options for artists and more bargaining power for venues in Rhode Island.
That verdict is a finding of liability. Remedies, post-trial motions and appeals are still ahead, and Live Nation has said it intends to pursue all of them. Still, it changes the frame. The Justice Department settled its half of the case against allegations. The states kept going and turned those allegations into a jury's answer.
The proposed judgment is not nothing, and the coalition's critics deserve to have its contents laid out straight. It would require Ticketmaster to build an open ticket-distribution and authentication system, operational within 275 days of the judgment's entry, so that a major venue running on Ticketmaster's back end could sell primary tickets through a rival marketplace of the venue's choosing. Venues with qualifying exclusive contracts could carve out one event per year for another provider; venues with at least four years left on their contracts could route up to 20 percent of fee-bearing inventory through competitors, with possible pro rata adjustments to the venue's economics. Future fully exclusive ticketing contracts would top out at four years. Promoters and artists could distribute up to half their tickets through competitors at Live Nation-controlled amphitheaters. Thirteen listed venues would see their booking, promotion, ownership or control arrangements terminated or modified, opening the door to new ticketing bids. A 2022 agreement between Ticketmaster and Oak View Group would be terminated. There would be data firewalls between Ticketmaster and Live Nation's promotion and venue staff, anti-retaliation rules, a court-appointed monitor and an eight-year term.
Six states that signed on — Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota — would receive fixed payments totaling roughly $18.6 million. Rhode Island is not on that list.
What the judgment would not do is separate the two companies. Live Nation would still own Ticketmaster. That single fact carries the coalition's entire argument.
The coalition's comment argues that leaving Live Nation vertically integrated leaves every incentive in place: a company that promotes the shows, owns the amphitheaters and sells the tickets has reasons to favor itself that no rulebook can fully police. It points out that the remedies here are behavioral — conduct rules and monitoring — the same species of remedy the Justice Department accepted when it approved the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger in 2010, and the same species Neronha's office said the department later accused Live Nation of violating through venue threats and retaliation. The coalition says the deal touches 13 venues while Live Nation keeps more than 265, a figure it draws from its own materials and prior government complaints. And it argues that a settlement negotiated against unproven allegations should now be measured against a jury verdict that proved them.
The coalition also alleges political interference in the settlement process and says the Justice Department failed to disclose alternatives as the Tunney Act requires. Both are allegations. The department's Competitive Impact Statement identifies finishing the liability trial as the alternative it considered. No court has found the process improper.
The Justice Department's own framing, delivered in a March 24 speech, is that this is a first: open ticketing technology forced onto the dominant platform, rival access to Live Nation amphitheaters, exclusive deals loosened, a service-fee cap written into a court order. Live Nation says the settlement resolves the federal claims with no admission of wrongdoing and, in its words, "no financial component," while the company separately set aside a $280 million fund for state damages claims and said it expects the states' case to end up roughly where the federal deal did.
Scale that fund against Live Nation's 2025 revenue, which the company reported to the SEC at $25.201 billion, and it comes to about 1.1 percent — a little over four days of sales.
The strongest case for approving the deal is speed. The open-ticketing system would have to exist within 275 days of entry; a remedies fight in the states' case could run for years through appeals. Real venues would get a real option to shop ticketing before anyone in a courtroom finishes arguing about divestiture. That is a genuine benefit, and the coalition's answer is that the two paths are not exclusive: it asks the court to protect the states' separate remedies case rather than let the federal judgment set a ceiling on it.
The AMP's current ticketing page lists Ticketmaster and AXS as authorized sellers and warns buyers that displayed prices may not include facility, processing and Ticketmaster fees. It adds that a facility fee applies even when you buy at the box office. The venue is owned by the Rhode Island Convention Center Authority and managed by Oak View Group — the same OVG whose 2022 Ticketmaster agreement the proposed judgment would terminate, with qualifying OVG-managed venues allowed to request new ticketing bids. Whether the AMP's own contract qualifies for the one-event carve-out, the 20 percent option or a new RFP turns on that contract's length and remaining term.
What the AMP would not get is the 15 percent cap. That provision is written for amphitheaters Live Nation owns, operates or controls, and the fees it caps do not include the facility fee that the AMP charges at every point of sale.
The 60-day comment window opened with the Federal Register notice on July 6. The coalition's filing, every other comment and the Justice Department's response now go to Subramanian, who must decide whether entering the judgment is in the public interest. Rhode Island's attorney general answered that question in March. The judge has not answered it yet.
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