Judge Signals He’ll Likely Deny Live Nation’s Motion to Delay DOJ Case

It looks like the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster is moving forward.

Over the weekend, Live Nation and Ticketmaster asked a federal judge to halt the trial next month while two legal questions are reviewed by an appeals court. In the motion, filed February 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the companies requested permission to pursue an interlocutory appeal of portions of Judge Arun Subramanian’s February 18 summary judgment ruling.

| READ: Live Nation Files Appeal Motion in DOJ Case Days After Pulling Settlement Blog Post |

However, in a final pre-trial conference on February 25, Judge Subramanian said he will likely deny the motion, and the the case should move forward to a jury, Bloomberg reports. The judge said he’d issue his written ruling in coming days.

The news follows the DOJ’s 15-page opposition brief — filed on Tuesday — which calls Live Nation’s motion a “desperate plea,” arguing that it is “meritless attempt to delay trial.”

“The public interest weights starkly against a stay pending appeal,” the DOJ said in the conclusion of their brief. “Defendants’ anticompetitive conduct has harmed, and will continue to harm, consumers until it is deemed unlawful. This last, desperate attempt to avoid that outcome — on the eve of trial — should be rejected so Defendants can be held accountable by a jury for their anticompetitive conduct.”

Live Nation’s motion follows a now-removed public statement from Live Nation EVP of Corporate & Regulatory Affairs Dan Wall, who last week called on the DOJ to settle the case.

In a blog post titled “It’s Time to Move On,” Wall argued that the summary judgment ruling effectively eliminated any realistic prospect of a court-ordered breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. He maintained that the dismissal of the government’s concert promotion monopoly theory “ends the narrative” that ticketing and promotion operate as mutually reinforcing monopolies.

Live Nation reported record annual revenues of $25.2 billion for 2025 the same week Wall’s settlement call was published — and disclosed that it paid no U.S. federal income taxes in 2025, attributing the outcome to provisions included in the recently enacted federal tax legislation known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

The DOJ, joined by attorneys general from 39 states and the District of Columbia — with additional states later joining — sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster in May 2024, alleging monopolistic conduct across promotion, venue control, and ticketing markets.

Jury selection is set to begin on March 2, with a trial start date of March 6.