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Get ready for the Chromatica Ball! Lady Gaga is bringing her hit tour to HBO for Memorial Day weekend.

Gaga Chromactica Ball, a concert special featuring performances of “Stupid Love,” “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance,” “Poker Face,” “Shallow,” “Rain On Me” and other Gaga hits, premieres Saturday (May 25) on HBO. The film will also be available to stream on Max.

Produced, directed and created by Gaga, the special was filmed during the Grammy winner’s 2022 tour stop at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium, where she performed in front of a sold-out crowd of 52,000 people.

Gaga Chromactica Ball is executive produced by Bobby Campbell, Arthur Fogel, John Janick and Steve Berman.

Keep reading for details on how to watch and stream from anywhere.

Where to Watch Gaga Chromatica Ball Online

Gaga Chromactica Ball premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will stream on Max.

If you don’t have cable but want to watch HBO live, you can access HBO and other channels on DirecTV Stream. Plans start at $79.99/month for 90+ cable and local channels including Bravo, E!, HGTV, ESPN, CNN, Lifetime, MTV, Hallmark, FX, AMC, Fuse, Food Network, TNT, TBS, TLC and more.

DirecTV Stream subscribers can add HBO, HBO Family, HBO Comedy and other HBO channels for an additional fee, or subscribe to Max and stream HBO movies, Max originals and lots more.

Want to watch for free? DirecTV’s Premiere Plan ($109.99/month) includes free access to Max, Paramount+ with Showtime and Starz, for the three months. DirecTV Stream also offers a free trial for five days and DVR storage.

How to Watch Gaga Chromactica Ball on Max

Max is available as a stand-alone streamer for $9.99/month to watch with ads and $15.99/month for ad-free streaming. Max is also available on Prime Video, Hulu and Verizon Fios.

The platform combines movies, TV, sports and news into one streaming platform. Max subscribers can stream HBO, Max Originals, ID Network, TLC, CNN, Discovery and more.

Some of the movies, TV shows and exclusive series streaming on Max include House of the Dragon, Hacks, Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, The Last of Us, And Just Like That, True Detective: Night Country, Succession, Selena + Restaurant, Dune: Part 2 and Ironclaw.

Gaga’s concert film will be a global streaming event. For fans that want to watch internationally, ExpressVPN and other VPNs provide access various streaming platforms.

Additionally, Gaga Chromactica Ball will stream on Max in Latin America and the Caribbean, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The special will be available on HBO Max in The Netherlands and Poland, on HBO GO in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, on Crave in Canada, on Pass Warner in France, on Stan in Australia, and on ThreeNow and Three in New Zealand. Streaming details for the U.K., Italy, Germany, India and Japan have yet to be announced.

Watch the trailer for Gaga Chromatica Ball below.

The Department of Justice dropped a wide-ranging antitrust complaint against Live Nation on Thursday (May 23), highlighting more than a dozen examples of the company’s “anticompetitive and exclusionary” behavior in accusing it of operating live music’s largest monopoly.

The evidence looks particularly bad for Live Nation chief executive Michael Rapino, whose own emails are being used against him to document alleged threats made against competitors while the company was operating under a federal consent decree tied to its 2010 merger with Live Nation.

Under the arrangement, regulators with the government had the right to obtain company documents, including communications, without a subpoena. The most damaging evidence is an email exchange involving Oak View Group’s Tim Leiweke and mega music manager Irving Azoff, who co-founded the arena development and management company together.

Leiweke was the CEO of AEG, Live Nation’s main rival in the concert business, until 2012, when he was fired by company owner Phil Anschutz. After a brief stint running the Toronto Maple Leafs and its sports and entertainment interests in Canada, he returned to the United States and eventually founded Oak View Group (OVG) in 2015.

The government claims Rapino tried to leverage his company’s partnership with OVG to pressure private equity firm Silver Lake to kill off a rival ticketing company that Rapino allegedly believed represented a major threat to Ticketmaster.

If true, the story could be a major problem for Rapino, underscoring the government narrative that despite Live Nation’s massive market share, the CEO operates the company like a paranoid pugilist, willing to cross ethical and legal boundaries to eliminate tiny threats.

Silver Lake has been OVG’s strategic investment partner since the company’s founding, investing $100 million to launch it. Today, it has more than $2.5 billion tied up in OVG development projects. Silver Lake also owns TEG, an Australian concert promotion company that operates Ticketek, a large Australian ticket provider with more than 130 clients.

According to the 120-page complaint filed Thursday in federal court, “In 2021, Live Nation’s CEO complained to Oak View Group’s co-founder that TEG was ‘[f]ull on competitors.’ Oak View Group, in turn, conveyed to Silver Lake that Live Nation was ‘not happy.’” The complaint adds that Rapino then escalated his complaints to Silver Lake directly, stating: “I am all in on [Oak View Group] where the big play lies with venues – why insult me with this investment in ticketing/promotions etc.’”

According to the lawsuit, “Rapino threatened to pull its support from Oak View Group and instead back an Oak View Group competitor unless TEG stopped competing with Live Nation in the United States,” the complaint alleges.

“I can assure you the OVG investment is a much bigger win then T[E]G,” Rapino wrote in an email to an unnamed Silver Lake executive that’s included in the lawsuit. “It’s been a huge win for both sides– we have over 20 global arenas in development that neither could do without the other … do you really want LN backing [AEG’s venue development and management company]…? Seems like a dumb trade off??”

To aid in the pressure campaign, Azoff “reportedly refused to allow TEG to promote any of his large roster of artist clients,” the complaint alleges. It further states that Azoff told Rapino “that he was going to demand that Silver Lake sell TEG. [To which] Live Nation’s CEO replied ‘Love ya.’”

“Silver Lake now seems ‘intent on dumping teg’ and has asked, through the founder of Oak View Group, whether Live Nation would be interested in purchasing TEG,” the complaint reads in describing the back-and-forth.

Live Nation did not purchase TEG, but in early 2023, a deal was brokered for Silver Lake to sell the company to investment companies Blackstone and KKR. That deal collapsed in October over disagreements over the valuation of the company, which is now being readied for an IPO in Australia.

Live Nation issued a statement on this allegation, stating that the “claim reveals not only a disregard for the facts, but also deep hypocrisy.”

“The current DOJ and FTC have been vocal critics of private equity companies making multiple investments in the same industry because of competitive ‘entanglements,’” the statement continues. “So was Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino when, after it had already made an investment in OVG, Silver Lake Partners decided to invest in the Australian live entertainment company, TEG. Rapino’s complaint was fundamentally the same as the DOJ/FTC concern with private equity rollups: it created a conflict between OVG, which had become a close partner to Live Nation, and TEG. So, in December 2021 when a TEG employee wrote to say that it did not intend to compete with Live Nation in the U.S., Rapino replied to Silver Lake’s management that he did not care about TEG, but still had a problem with Silver Lake’s decision to make multiple conflicting investments in the industry.”

The statement also claims that “there is no truth that this brief exchange had anything to do with Silver Lake’s decision to sell its stake in TEG.”

In addition to the allegations around TEG, the government’s complaint further alleges that OVG, when it was first founded in 2015, was “particularly well-suited to be a real competitor to Live Nation in the United States concert promotion business” but changed its model to avoid competing with Live Nation.

The evidence from the time, however, shows that OVG and Live Nation had long billed themselves as partners. A November 2015 press release announcing OVG’s launch includes a quote from Rapino endorsing Leiweke’s business model, stating, “Both Tim and Irving are friends of Live Nation as well as personal friends. The concept of creating an economic model for both arena’s and touring artists that creates new revenue streams and develops an ‘anchor’ type of platform for music is one we share.”

The DOJ claims that Live Nation initially identified OVG as one of its “Biggest Competitor Threats” but that over time, the two firms morphed “from competitors into partners who found it easier and mutually beneficial to work together rather than compete.”

According to the government, OVG in fact operates as “a self-described ‘pimp’ and ‘hammer’ for Live Nation, with Leiweke once telling Rapino ‘[j]ust like I tell our folks we 100% always protect you and LN on your lanes.’”

In 2016, “after learning that Oak View Group offered to promote an artist Live Nation had previously promoted, Live Nation’s CEO immediately emailed Oak View Group, warning that such competition would only lead to artists demanding more compensation,” reads the complaint. It further includes an email in which Rapino wrote of the artist: “Whats up? We have done his [touring] and vegas[.] Let’s make sure we don’t let [the artist agency] now start playing us off.”

As outlined in the complaint, Leiweke immediately responded, “Our guys got a bit ahead. All know we don’t promote and we only do tours with Live Nation.”

Azoff later chimed in, writing “Growing pains,” subsequently noting that OVG executives “should never discuss comp [for artists],” and that OVG’s talent buyers would work for Live Nation.

The government argues that this discussion is an example of Leiweke and Azoff colluding with Rapino to limit the competitive bids sent to an artist in order to keep artists fees low. In another example cited in the complaint from 2022, Rapino admonished Leweike for making a direct offer to an artist to play an OVG venue instead of asking Live Nation to promote the show for OVG.

“Who would be so stupid to do this and play into [the artist agent’s] arms”? Rapino asked Leiweke in the email. Leiweke responded, “We have never promoted without you. Won’t,” before later writing, “[m]ore than happy to do these deals thru LN as I have always been aligned,” and that “I never want to be competitors.”

The complaint also alleges that Live Nation “exploits its long-term relationship with Oak View Group to flip venues to Ticketmaster, further cementing Ticketmaster’s power.”

According to the DOJ, in 2022, Live Nation and OVG signed an unspecified agreement that resulted in OVG recognizing “it has a significant financial interest in maintaining existing Ticketmaster contracts at its venues and converting other venues to Ticketmaster.”

At some point, according to the lawsuit, Leiweke told Rapino that the deal “allows us to tie up all owned and operated facilities to 10 year deals, develop a standard A and B market deal for all future projects and to convert all OVG 360 deals to TM now or as they expire for 10 years… Appreciate the consideration and partnership and all of us will work diligently on this so we are always aligned with TM.”

Live Nation responded to this claim in a statement: “The theory is that the contract gave Ticketmaster an unfair advantage in securing the business of independent venues that were managed by OVG because it creates financial incentives for OVG to ‘advocate for’ Ticketmaster. But there is nothing remotely anticompetitive about that. Commercial arrangements that involve incentive or marketing payments are common throughout this industry (and many others).” The statement adds, “Ticketmaster competed and won the contract on the merits because OVG determined it was the best ticketing system available.”

It’s 9 p.m. on a Monday when Subtronics materializes on Zoom. In the last 72 hours, the artist born Jesse Kardon played his first set on the main stage at EDC Las Vegas, bringing a crowd of roughly 80,000 on the sonic rollercoaster ride that his thunderous dubstep facilitates. The set included a very special guest: Kardon’s wife Sonya Broner, who produces music as Level Up and who appeared alongside her husband for their debut as Leveltronics.

Before the show, he wrote that his 15-year career had been leading up to this mainstage performance. Talking to Billboard 72 hours later, he still seems floored that it happened.

“It’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘As respectfully as possible, what the f— am I doing here?’” he says with a laugh, the lights of his studio behind him giving the room a pink glow while his dog, Ellie, casually wanders past.

But there’s no rest for the in-demand. After EDC, Kardon flew across the country to Alabama’s Hangout Music Festival, where he was the Sunday night (May 19) headliner on the festival’s electronic-focused stage. These sets and other forthcoming summer dates, which include sets at Electric Forest and Hard Summer, follow a 16-date spring tour that included shows at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena and Brooklyn’s massive Barclays Center. Meanwhile, the tour behind the 2023 Subtronics album Antifractals grossed $5.2 million and sold 115,000 tickets over 40 shows, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore. (Boxscore also reports that the rest of Subtronics’ 2023 tour dates grossed another $4 million and sold another 71,000 tickets.)

If that sounds like a lot, consider that the producer basically did it all again this year, releasing his LP Tesseract this past February. The album is a dubstep master class, deftly maneuvering between bass as sharp as steel and softer, headier, more celestial flourishes, altogether emphasizing that the hard-hitting genre can still be cerebral. His shows behind the LP continue Thursday night (May 23) with the first of a two-night headlining run at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater.

Here, Kardon talks about his career, the schisms that exist between electronic music genres and more.

1. Where are you in the world right now, and what is the setting like?

I am home in my studio. I just got home today. Things are really calm. I’m recuperating. I’m going to quickly work on my set tonight a little bit. I’m feeling really grateful and a bit emotionally hungover from EDC, because it was such a big thing. There’s so much preparation for Red Rocks and EDC. This is literally the eye of the storm.

2. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself and what was the medium?

OK Computer by Radiohead. It was a CD, and I played it on my Discman. I can’t remember if I saved up allowance money, or if I got it as a birthday gift. The second thing that comes to mind is when I was 12 or 13 and figured out Limewire. I downloaded a bunch of alternative rock stuff on the Internet, like Mars Volta and stuff like that.

3. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid, and what do they think of what you do now?

My dad is actually in the music industry. He’s an independent concert promoter. Now he’s a talent buyer for various independent venues around Philadelphia. Before I was born, he was a tour manager for a band called The Hooters and would travel all over Europe. When I was born, he settled down and opened a small independent music venue called The Point where acts like Tegan & Sara played before they got big.

4. So you were raised in music?

I was raised in music for sure, but he works with primarily folk music and Americana. My mom has always had various office jobs. The longest one I remember was an outpatient clinic for young children with mental and physical disabilities. She worked as the main office manager in a small private practice. They’re super supportive. When I turned 5, my dad was like, “OK, which instrument do you want to play?” I play drums, and that was the forefront of my life until I started making music electronically.

5. Maybe there’s no such thing, but what is a typical day for you?

It’s so interesting. I have two extremely different lifestyles, but they both repeat exactly the same. Monday through Thursday when I’m home, I wake up around 12, have coffee, brush my teeth, shower, walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes, shower, have breakfast with my wife and I always do sourdough and egg over medium with pesto and guac with cauliflower hash browns. We walk our dog, and then I sit down to start working on music at probably 2 or 3 and work on music the entire day. Normally around 5 or 6, we feed and walk [our dog] Ellie. Around 11 or 12, we’ll be like “OK, let’s do dinner.” Then normally, we’ll either watch a movie, or if it’s really stressful, get back to work on music for a little bit. Then we just shower and go to bed. It’s pretty much exactly that day, every single day.

6. Then what’s it like when you’re on the road?

On the road, I think it’s probably the pretty standard DJ cycle of wake up in hotel, go to airport, hopefully no layovers, get to next city, get to next hotel, obsess over set, overthink random transitions and details that no one’s going to notice. Go to the site, play Steam Deck in the greenroom until I go to the stage, play the stage, then go back to the hotel, go to sleep and rinse and repeat.

7. How do you make part of the job sustainable for yourself?

One of the big things is that I’m not much of a partier. I’ve never really been a party kid. I’m definitely more a nerdy individual. I like to play video games and be on the Internet. More recently, I’ve been learning to clock out, so to speak. To be like, “This is my identity, but I should clock out and resume normal human life.”

8. You’ve previously mentioned being anxious. How do you manage your anxiety?

I actually started therapy a few months ago. It’s ironic, because I’ve been in and out of therapy and stuff like it for my entire life, for anxiety. So that, breathing exercises, reassurance. My wife is my rock. We have a group chat with another DJ and his partner. We vent constantly and are just petty in there. So venting frequently, breathing exercises, food, creature comforts, getting enough rest and recognizing when the voices in my head are being really mean. I realized, “Oh my god, I can be super mean to myself and not even realize it.” That’s so unnecessary. So various different exercises where I go through and remind myself that things are good, and that I’ve worked hard. But I think more than anything it’s probably just talking to my wife, Sonia, and creature comforts like nicotine, caffeine and marijuana.

8. You and your wife performed together last weekend at EDC as Leveltronics. How do you successfully launch a project like that with your partner?

It definitely came organically, because we both work on music all day, every day and our studios are next to each other. We both got offstage and were blown away at how easy and awesome it was.

[We both have] a really intense, involved, busy and complicated way of mixing. So every time either of us has ever done a back to back, we struggle. It’s hard. I have so many back to back memories where, because I mix in this particular way, it’s really challenging. The whole time I’m overthinking and I’m watching what they’re doing like, “Oh, they just missed that cue.” So being able to DJ with someone who does the exact same thing was like mixing in the mirror. It was so easy and so effortless. We kept having flashbacks to all the difficult back to backs and how amazing this one was.

9. Ahead of your EDC set you wrote on Instagram that your 15-year career has been leading up to that moment. What did playing the main stage at that festival mean to you?

It’s so hard to wrap my head around it, but it’s really validating, and it’s really self-affirming, and it’s unbelievably surreal. It is so beyond my wildest dreams. When I first downloaded Ableton, I just wanted to get good at making weird, niche music in a not popular genre I was interested in. I had no intention of being an artist in that genre, let alone a professional artist, let alone successful enough to play shows, let alone headline the biggest one. I say this a lot, but it’s one of those things where it’s like, “As respectfully as possible, what the f— am I doing here?” I’m floored with gratitude, flooded with emotion. I just can’t believe it.

10. What was going through your head on that stage playing for a crowd that size?

I’m honestly grateful that it’s taken this long to get there, because I felt experienced and seasoned enough that as soon as I was mixing, I just switched into the mode. There were a lot of moments of like, “Holy sh–, this is the big one.” But then also autopilot kicks in. … But I was definitely hit with frequent waves of, “Dude, this is main stage EDC. What the f—?”

11. I feel like bass music is still often positioned as underground. As you’re saying, you’re playing the main stage at EDC and going on these massive tours that sell a lot of tickets and make a lot of money. This is not a small thing. What’s your take on how bass music is positioned in dance music culture?

It’s really interesting, because when you’re really in it and the tunnel vision is going, dubstep feels like it can be massive. We have Lost Lands and Seven Lions playing Ultra main stage and there’s dubstep on the EDC main stage. I’m playing riddim edits in front of 80,000 people. Like what?

So it feels massive, but then there’s perspective shifters. I’ll never forget when I first went to Lollapalooza and saw a crowd of a major pop star and the scale that’s on. Or watching the Billie Eilish documentary and seeing the grandness of that and how massive it is. I’ve had many times where my perspective has been changed, and I’m like, “We really ain’t sh–.” This is niche, small stuff for sure. It almost feels like there’s a responsibility to push dubstep, because we’re nearing the ceiling of how far dubstep has gone, and we want to push it farther.

12. How much bigger do you think it can get?

It’s so interesting, because at the same time, you see the term “big EDM” on Twitter, where there’s been this internal schism, where people think the agency artists that play the big festivals have become the corporate mainstream thing, and then there’s this underground resurgence thing. But [look at it more broadly] and what is labeled as “big EDM” is still more underdog and underground. Compared to the rest of EDM as a whole, bass music is tiny in the grand scheme. And then dance music compared to all of music is tiny.

13. Say more about that.

It’s really easy for perspective to warp on how big or small stuff really is. But what I definitely remind myself of is that I’m unbelievably lucky to have made a career in dubstep. I’m so excited for how big it has gotten and how many fans there are, but in the grand scheme it’s definitely a niche. To that end, as someone who had under 10,000 followers for the longest time, I feel a tremendous responsibility to put on as many small, underground artists as I can possibly help support.

14. You mentioned the schisms within the electronic scene itself, and it’s such a broad world and spectrum of sound, so it often feels ridiculous to even compare things that are going on under the broad umbrella term. But then you have all of these different types of electronic artists playing under a banner like EDC or some such festival, so there’s obviously major connective tissue. Do you experience the fractured-ness or a sort of separateness between the genres?

What’s interesting is that in real life, no. Barely. What’s so surprising when you put your phone down is how much love there is between genres. I believe there’s good examples of good music in every single genre and there’s great examples of terrible music in every single genre. So I love everything, and I think a lot of our fans love everything and a lot of other genre fans love everything.

We noticed this when we were working with John Summit and other artists that do something completely different, but such a large percentage of both of our fanbases are really excited to see a crossover, because they really like both. So in real life, there’s so much more overlap than I ever could have imagined. I think social media is just oftentimes the Yelp of the world, where if anyone has complaints, they’re going to go to social media with those complaints. So that’s where that schism is put on display.

15. It often seems like people don’t really know what’s actually happening in the genre they’re rejecting. They just reject it on the principle. Does that feel true to you?

That’s something I definitely grew out of as I got older and more mature. But when your personality is based around an underground grassroots movement, if you see something coming in that gives you the sense of it being threatened and you don’t want to see it change, it’s extremely valid. There are instances where gatekeeping makes sense in my head, because people don’t want to see something capitalism’d to death. They don’t want to see a bunch of businesspeople come in and extract authentic art for all the money they can and suck out of it for. That’s real. That’s valid.

But I think there’s almost a witch-hunt atmosphere where people see something get popular and all of a sudden their preferences and artistic tastes don’t necessarily overlap as much. Then they’re like, “Oh, this is corporate nonsense now, and I hate it.” I think people are trying to protect stuff they hold dear, and they might be coming from a place of being totally valid, but then sometimes the wrong stuff gets caught in the crosshairs.

17. You’re returning to Red Rocks this week. That venue is such a rite of passage for artists, especially electronic artists. What are your strongest memories of that place?

The first time I played there, I definitely cried mid-set. There is absolutely a magic to it. My favorite memories are probably the big crowd responses and the excitement of getting the sold-out trophy and cutting the cake with the little character of me on it that they give you backstage.

18. What is the best business decision you’ve ever made?

Years ago, I had a manager who is now sober and who has hit me up and sent his best wishes. I wish him the best. But at the time, he was struggling with addiction, so things were not going well professionally. I wasn’t really doing anything on any legitimate scale yet, so I was super naive and had no idea how anything was supposed to work or be going.

I had this agent, Eric Silver, that came to me like, “Hey, your manager is hitting you up at 5 in the morning asking you to PayPal him. I’m pretty sure he’s doing drugs. I’m starting a management thing. Do you want me to be your manager?” I’m a conflict avoider, and I’m a huge pushover, so it was really tough, but I had to let go of my previous manager and go with Eric Silver, and then later Elise Young, and then later Brandon Garber. They’re the greatest team ever. They’re extreme geniuses. I always say Subtronics is a company I started, but I just turn the knobs and play the sets.

19. Who’s been your greatest mentor and what’s the best advice they’ve given you?

Longest term would be my dad. I always get paranoid when I tell people my dad is in the music industry, that they’ll think there’s nepotism there. I always try and reiterate that he’s a small, independent promoter. But all of the best advice I’ve gotten has been from him. Just him reminding me of stuff like success in the music industry is about relationships and being a nice, friendly person who people want to work with. These are things I’ve lived my life by and I believe are a huge reason why we’ve been able to be as successful as we have been.

20. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to your younger self?

Be patient, keep working hard, start eating better now. A big reason why you’re so anxious all the time is because you’re putting garbage food into your body. Your brain makes serotonin based off the nutrients you feed into it, so you’ll feel better emotionally if you start getting more physically active and if you start eating better food, because you’re miserable. So just hang in there and keep working hard, because it will get better.

A Department of Justice lawsuit against Live Nation for violating U.S. antitrust laws is imminent and could be filed as soon as Thursday (May 23), a source with knowledge of the DOJ’s plans tells Billboard.

The lawsuit is rumored to charge that Live Nation has a monopoly on event ticketing through Ticketmaster and that it illegally uses its monopoly power to grow its business and stifle competition. The DOJ has been investigating Live Nation for more than two years. With that investigation now wrapped, company president Joe Berchtold recently said he was that he was hopeful his company would avoid a legal showdown with the DOJ’s top antitrust lawyer, Jonathan Kanter.

“These are always serious discussions. We wouldn’t get to this point if they didn’t have concerns, but the good news is we’re still talking and they’ve said they have an open mind,” Berchtold told attendees at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications conference in Boston on Tuesday (May 21).

“Without getting into the real details of the conversation, I think it’s fair to say I continue to believe that we fundamentally have business practices that are fully defensible,” Berchtold added, before continuing: “We’re also open to figuring out common ground in order to get this settled and moved on. But we don’t know exactly what they want at this point still.”

Live Nation declined to comment for this story.

The Department of Justice’s case is believed to be centered around Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts when signing up venues for its ticketing services. Typically, Ticketmaster pays venues an advance on the revenue that it generates from the fees it charges consumers as part of the ticket-buying process. The longer the contract, the larger the advance Ticketmaster can pay out.

DOJ officials don’t like the practice, arguing that it locks out new companies from competing in the ticketing space. Ticketmaster officials, however, argue that they are open to working with non-exclusive contracts — both the Greek Theatre in Hollywood and Red Rocks in Denver are open facilities where promoters use the ticketing provider of their choice — but that venues often rely on exclusive deals to meet their capital needs.

While Ticketmaster holds more exclusive ticketing contracts than any other company, it isn’t the only one to make use of them: Every major competitor pays upfront advances in exchange for exclusive ticketing agreements with venues and sports teams.

That includes SeatGeek, which reportedly paid $10 million in 2021 for exclusive rights to ticket events at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for a seven-year term. Two years into the agreement, Billboard reported at the time, Barclays Center and BSE Global chief executive Sam Zussman threatened to publicize SeatGeek’s tech problems and breaches of contract if it didn’t immediately agree to terminate the deal.

SeatGeek eventually agreed to wind down its relationship with Barclays Center and was replaced by Ticketmaster. DOJ officials reportedly scrutinized the incident during its investigation of Live Nation.