SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 10 – Having covered
the US v. Live Nation antitrust trial through the April 15
jury verdict before Judge Subramanian, Inner City Press
has pursued the paper trail into the states — with Right
to Know and Freedom of Information Act requests about the
case, the partial settlement six states signed, and what
consumers told their Attorneys General all along. (Inner
City Press has also sued DOJ under FOIA for withholding
all records).
Now New Hampshire has produced: 1,028
Bates-stamped pages of consumer complaints to the NH
Attorney General's Consumer Protection Bureau about
Ticketmaster and Live Nation, going back years before DOJ
sued. The very first complaint in the production, from
March 18, 2021, says it all. A New Hampshire consumer
bought four lawn tickets to see the Avett Brothers with
Ringo Starr at the Bank of NH Pavilion in Gilford: $36.25
per ticket — plus $14.85 per ticket in service fees and a
$5 processing fee. Fees of $19.85 on a $36.25 ticket:
54.7%. "I can't wrap my mind around service fees for
$19.85/ticket," she wrote her Attorney General. "This
should be against the law and this company is literally
robbing people.
They are a monopoly in the business and
they should be shut down." Her proposed resolution: cap
service fees at $5 a ticket. "Please let me know how you
can contribute to getting this monopoly of a company from
holding concert goers hostage with their fees without any
competition." That was three years before the Department
of Justice and states filed suit making, in substance, the
same allegation. The complaints kept coming — page after
Bates-stamped page of New Hampshire concertgoers
describing fees, unavailability, and resale games, filed
with an office that had the evidence in its files all
along.
What New Hampshire's Attorney General John
Formella is not producing is the other half of Inner City
Press's request: the office's own assessment of the March
26, 2026 partial settlement between DOJ, six states —
Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South
Dakota — and Live Nation; its communications with those
settling states and with DOJ; its position on the sealing
motions that Live Nation, Oak View Group, AEG and Madison
Square Garden filed during the trial; and its assessment
of the substitution of stipulated facts for the 6,000-page
Ticketmaster contract compilation, PX-1282 — including
whether any New Hampshire venues' contracts are in it.
Those records were withheld in a partial denial.
Inner City Press has objected and, with New
Hampshire's newly created Right-to-Know Ombudsman office
currently vacant and unable to act on filings, the avenue
the statute leaves is Superior Court, where RSA 91-A
petitions get priority on the calendar. So: the complaints
of New Hampshire consumers, public at last. The State's
own thinking about the settlement reached over their heads
— still secret. Watch this site.