States Put Live Nation’s Rapino at Center of Ticketmaster Strategy as Testimony Focuses on Ticketing Demands, Venue Leverage, and “Velvet Hammer”

Michael Rapino took the stand Thursday in the antitrust trial against Live Nation and Ticketmaster, giving the remaining state plaintiffs an opportunity to place the company’s monopoly case directly in front of the executive who built the modern Live Nation empire.

And the states did not waste time treating Rapino as some distant corporate figurehead.

Instead, they used him to lock in the foundational points they needed for the stretch run of trial: that he was CEO when Live Nation acquired Ticketmaster, that the merger was part of his strategy, that he signs the company’s SEC filings, that he accepts responsibility for Live Nation’s acts, and that the company he leads is, by its own description, “the largest live entertainment company in the world.”

That setup mattered because the trial has now produced a steady stream of evidence about amphitheater leverage, venue pressure, fan-fee extraction, premium pricing, and internal efforts to steer or protect Ticketmaster relationships. Thursday was the day the states began tying those themes directly to the man at the top.

That record already included the Slack messages from current Live Nation ticketing executive Ben Baker gloating about parking and upsell revenue, mocking fans, and saying the company was “robbing them blind.” Baker later called the messages “indefensible” in court, but also indicated he had seen no consequences from his employer to date. On Thursday, Rapino was forced to address them himself, calling the remarks “disgusting” and saying “it’s not the way we operate,” while also acknowledging he only learned of them last week and had not yet fired Baker, adding that Live Nation would “deal with it” and that “we don’t fire easily.”

At the same time, another telling fight unfolded before the jury heard from him at all: what jurors would and would not be allowed to hear about Rapino personally. Before testimony began, Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that plaintiffs could say Rapino is Live Nation’s largest individual shareholder, but not present the specific details of his holdings or salary, according to courtroom reporting from Inner City Press.

Jurors have now heard days of evidence about fan-paid fees, parking markups, premium products, platinum pricing, and other tactics that allegedly helped Live Nation and Ticketmaster extract more money across the live-event chain. Keeping details of Rapino’s personal financial stake away from the jury means limiting one obvious avenue for the states to show how much the company’s top leadership benefited while those strategies scaled.

That tension became even sharper later in the day when Live Nation’s lawyers tried to elicit testimony about wage increases for workers, only for the judge to sustain an objection and instruct the jury to disregard Rapino’s statement about employee compensation. Even in those side disputes, the same basic battle was visible: what broader moral and financial context jurors will be allowed to consider as they weigh the company’s conduct.

Thursday’s Live Thread from Inner City Press

All rise!
Judge Subramanian: We'll address later the proposed exclusion of some of Doctor Hill expert opinion, those that remain after the DOJ settlement. Jurors 9 and 12 are excused based on financial hardship – the Court was unable to solve it, they are excused

— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) March 19, 2026

Internal records show Rapino was tracking the amphitheater machine in detail

The internal records filed Thursday reinforce the point that Rapino was not merely receiving abstract investor-level summaries while others ran the business below him.

A series of 2016 internal “US Concerts Priorities” and weekly tracker exhibits sent to Rapino show him receiving highly detailed operating dashboards about amphitheater and arena performance, including ticket pacing, show counts, premium revenue, platinum lift, food-and-beverage per-cap trends, and contribution margin.

One of the stronger of those exhibits tracks large owned-and-operated amphitheaters in particularly concrete terms, including premium-seat revenue, platinum net lift, and food-and-beverage growth. Another internal handout comparing arena and large owned-and-operated amphitheater tours says those amphitheater dates produced materially higher contribution margin per show while also delivering stronger artist walkouts.

Those records are useful to the states because they help show why amphitheaters have become such a central pillar of the case. They were not just one venue category among many. They were major economic engines, and the economics were being tracked at the very top of the organization.

The Jonas Brothers documents may be the day’s most revealing evidence

Some of the most damaging documents aired Thursday related to the Jonas Brothers tour and internal demands placed on venues around Ticketmaster and deal economics.

In the originating email, Brad Wavra — then a senior Live Nation touring executive overseeing the Jonas Brothers run — circulated a list of terms regional Live Nation offices were expected to push when venues tried to book the tour. Those demands included a “$3/ticket outside the deal,” a “$1 bump on Ticketmaster,” and the best available rent and merchandise arrangement, along with the blunt instruction that the company would play only buildings that “want this bad enough to deal with above.”

That alone is striking, because it captures the states’ core theory in unusually direct language: that Live Nation’s value proposition to venues was not simply access to a show, but access on terms that let the company press for more money, better rebates, and Ticketmaster-related concessions at the same time.”

But the chain became even more revealing as it moved beyond Live Nation itself. Wavra’s email was forwarded by Oak View Group executive Eric Gardner to other OVG executives, eventually reaching Peter Luukko, who brought it to Irving Azoff’s attention. Azoff then escalated it to Rapino and Bob Roux. In the message carrying it upward, Azoff wrote

“Cowboy brad at it again. buildings are confused on how to respond. I told them I would get guidance from you guys but they are just going to turn around and call their locals for reduction in their live nation rebates. Shouldn’t this be handled by you guys just like you do with eagles?”

That sequence is important for two reasons. First, it shows how the pressure generated by Live Nation’s touring demands spilled immediately into venue-level confusion about rebates, ticketing, and overall deal structure. Second, it puts Oak View Group executives and Azoff directly inside the information flow around a Live Nation venue-demand dispute — a notable overlap in light of the broader allegation that OVG often functioned less as a true competitive check on Live Nation than as part of the same tightly intertwined live-events power structure.

Rapino’s own response sharpened the point rather than softening it. In one related exhibit, he wrote: “Can’t do these one off hero asks – we drive overall building deals and touring deliver the show – not these big all email grabs like this,” then added: “No wonder agents come after us when we are asking for this in email outside the overall arena deal we have in the market?”

That is a remarkable document for the states because it cuts in two directions at once. On one level, Rapino can point to it and say he was criticizing sloppy or excessive conduct. But on another, it suggests the problem was not that these demands were foreign to the business — it was that they were being stated too explicitly, and too clumsily, in email. The language does not read like someone shocked by an alien practice. It reads like someone angry that subordinates put into writing the sort of integrated pressure the states say was built into Live Nation’s model.

A related exhibit deepens that impression even further. In that exchange, staff are warned: “Please do not send emails that state you want to ‘crush’ a Competitor. Not the language we want to be seeing in emails when reviewed by the DOJ or anyone for that matter.” The reply: “Crap. Ok. I’m sorry.”

That line is devastating not because it proves everything the states allege on its own, but because it suggests internal awareness that the issue was not merely aggressive business language. It was how clearly that language exposed the very conduct the company did not want regulators to see.

Ticketmaster contracting was viewed internally as “step one”

Another document admitted Thursday gives the states a concise and powerful illustration of how Live Nation internally linked Ticketmaster contracting to broader venue alignment.

In a 2017 email about a new Minneapolis venue, Mark Campana forwarded a signed Ticketmaster contract to Rapino and others and wrote: “This is the signed TM contract for the new venue in Minny. Step one completed. I believe we will have the venue on an exclusive basis shortly. He would not have signed the TM deal if he was not going with us the way I see it.”

That is a compact statement of the theory the states have been building all week. Ticketmaster, in this view, was not simply a service provider competing for stand-alone software business. Its deals could operate as part of a broader sequence leading toward venue alignment, exclusivity, and integration with the rest of Live Nation’s business.

For jurors, that kind of internal language may do more work than pages of abstract economic theory.

Even seemingly small venue decisions could become multimillion-dollar revenue plays

One of the more revealing aspects of the trial record is how often Live Nation’s internal planning materials reduce ordinary fan experience choices to monetization levers.

In a 2024 Venue Nation planning deck previously aired in the case (embedded below), Live Nation outlined tactics for growing amphitheater revenue through food and beverage, premium products, and upsells. Among them was a plan to eliminate outside lawn chairs at 15 venues — a move that may sound minor in isolation, but fits a broader strategy of pushing fans toward paid in-house alternatives and higher per-head spend. The same deck projected major growth targets across amphitheater upsells, premium revenue, and food-and-beverage sales, underscoring how seemingly small restrictions or policy tweaks could turn into millions when deployed across a national venue network.

That kind of evidence makes the states’ theory tangible. The issue is not only merger theory or abstract market definition. It is also how a dominant live-events company can turn one more fan inconvenience, one more paid upgrade, or one more foreclosed option into incremental revenue at scale.

Some venue decisions were framed in strategic ticketing terms, not just straight economics

Thursday’s exhibit set also included useful evidence for another states’ theme: that some Live Nation decisions make more sense when viewed through strategic control of ticketing and venue position, rather than simple venue profitability in isolation.

One internal document tied to the Alpharetta / Project Eagle discussions says the economics of a deal may require spelling out the “non-economic/strategic justification,” specifically including the “opportunity cost” of losing Ticketmaster earnings if a venue “lands with/stays with our competitor.”

That matters because it goes to the integrated structure at the center of the case. The states are not simply arguing that Live Nation negotiates hard or wants profitable venues. They are arguing that the company’s venue, promotion, and ticketing businesses reinforce one another in ways that distort the market. A document explicitly invoking strategic value in preserving Ticketmaster earnings helps that argument substantially.

Rapino tries to cast Live Nation as a professionalized, highly complex business

When Live Nation’s own questioning of Rapino began, the company moved to broaden the frame and position him as the leader of a massive, modernized global enterprise rather than the architect of a coercive machine.

According to the courtroom thread, Rapino testified that he entered the industry after falling in love with live music, helped bring professionalism to a fragmented business, and now oversees an organization with tens of thousands of employees and global operations. He described modern concerts as massive logistical undertakings — more like “Super Bowls” than the regional concert business of earlier eras.

He also tried to recast Ticketmaster’s dominance as a reflection of technological difficulty and scale rather than brute power. Rapino reportedly said ticketing is a “hard hard business,” referred to older systems as “green screen old technology,” and said the platform had been opened to outside partners such as Spotify, Visa, and Citibank.

That line of defense is straightforward: Live Nation wants jurors to see the business as hard to run, hard to replicate, and hard to reduce to a simple narrative of bullying.

But even that rebuttal may not help the company as much as it hopes. The states are not arguing that the live-events business is easy. They are arguing that Live Nation’s scale and complexity gave it extraordinary leverage — and that it used that leverage across promotion, venues, and ticketing in ways that rivals could not match.

Further Trial Coverage from TicketNews

⁃ Ticketing Tech, Venue Leverage, and What Jurors May Not Hear Ahead of Rapino Testimony ⁃ Live Nation Trial Presses Fees, Conditioning, and Consent-Decree Questions ⁃ Trial Resumes; States Press Amphitheater Case, Judge Presses Settlement Disclosure Obligations ⁃ Most States to Press On with Antitrust Trial, Resuming Monday in New York ⁃ Internal Chats Illustrate Holdback, Platinum Pricing Squeeze ⁃ Unsealed Exhibits Show Ticketing Executives Mocking Fans, Boasting of Upsell Charges ⁃ Judge presses states to negotiate after DOJ’s shock settlement— holdout AGs push for mistrial ⁃ Judge Says DOJ, Live Nation Showed “Absolute Disrespect” for Court in Settlement Chaos ⁃ DOJ-Live Nation Term Sheet Details Settlement Framework ⁃ Live Nation, DOJ Reach Settlement Avoiding Ticketmaster Breakup ⁃ Consumers, Policy Groups, and Lawmakers Slam Proposed Settlement ⁃ States Plan to Continue Pursuing Live Nation Antitrust Case Without DOJ ⁃ Live Nation Says DOJ Settlement Will “Improve the Concert Experience,” Denies Antitrust Allegations ⁃ ’I Will Not Be Gaslit’: Consumers React to DOJ-Live Nation Settlement

Barclays remains a live dispute — but not a simple one

The defense also used Rapino to push back on one of the more sensitive venue episodes in the case: Barclays Center’s move away from Ticketmaster.

According to the courtroom thread, Rapino testified that the Barclays contract had been shaped by the COVID period and that he believed Live Nation was still in the running before the venue ultimately went with SeatGeek. In audio played in court, Barclays executive John Abbamondi could be heard citing technology issues and an eight-figure difference. Rapino responded angrily and argued Barclays still owed the company another year under the agreement.

That gives Live Nation a more concrete defense than simply denying pressure outright. It lets the company say Barclays was a messy contract and economics dispute, not just a case of Live Nation threatening retaliation.

Still, that does not erase the states’ broader point. Even in the defense version, Live Nation’s leverage over content, ticketing, and venue relationships remains central to the story. Rapino’s response on the call — and his anger at the venue’s move — underscores how consequential those relationships were.

Redirect brings the states back to the core theory: the “Velvet Hammer”

After Live Nation finished its questioning, the states used redirect to return Rapino to one of the most important themes in the case: the use of content and venue leverage against competitors and counterparties.

According to the courtroom thread, Jeffrey Kessler pressed Rapino on whether he knew Bob Roux threatened venues, whether he remembered the “velvet hammer,” and whether his name appeared on the relevant email chain with Brad Wavra. Rapino acknowledged that the emails exist and that his name was on the thread, but when pressed on whether he knew Roux was using the “velvet hammer” against Red Mountain because “they need the content,” he responded that the issue had “nothing to do with ticketing.”

That answer is useful to the states precisely because it reflects the compartmentalization they have been trying to attack throughout the trial. Their theory is not that ticketing power exists in isolation. It is that Live Nation’s leverage comes from the way ticketing, promotion, venue access, and content work together. So when Rapino tries to distance the “velvet hammer” from ticketing, he is effectively restating the division the states say does not hold in the real world.

Kessler then pushed further, asking whether Rapino himself had used the “velvet hammer.” Rapino responded first that he had not been asked that and then said he did not know what the phrase meant. Coming after days of testimony and documents centered on internal leverage, venue pressure, and competitive blocking, that exchange is likely to read less like a clean denial than an attempt to avoid embracing language that now sits at the center of the plaintiffs’ case.

Kessler also used the close of redirect to put exclusivity itself back in front of Rapino. When asked whether Live Nation would pay for exclusive arrangements if they did not make the company money, Rapino answered that “the venues dictate this” and argued that he does not tell powerful venue owners what to do. Kessler countered that most venues are not owned by billionaires. That brief exchange neatly captured the divide between the sides: Live Nation portrays exclusives as choices made by sophisticated counterparties, while the states argue the company’s integrated power gives those “choices” a very different character in practice.

Thursday is shaping up as a defining day in the trial

The states have now used Rapino to authenticate the merger, the company’s scale, and his own responsibility for Live Nation’s conduct. They have also put in front of him documents showing the economics of the amphitheater machine, internal concern about exposing anti-competitive language, strategic concern over losing Ticketmaster earnings to competitors, and explicit controversy over Ticketmaster bumps and venue demands.

Live Nation has responded by trying to recast Rapino as the executive who professionalized a chaotic industry, and built a technologically demanding global operation.

By the end of the day, Rapino had offered the jury Live Nation’s preferred self-portrait: a professionalized global company operating in a difficult business, dealing with powerful counterparties, and unfairly reduced by plaintiffs to a handful of ugly documents. But the states left him with a harder problem. The more they pressed him on amphitheater economics, Ticketmaster strategy, one-off venue demands, “crush” competitor language, and the “velvet hammer,” the harder it became to treat those records as random noise from the edges of the company.

Thursday’s testimony pushed the case closer to its central question: whether Live Nation’s dominance is simply the result of scale and success, or of a system whose pressure points were understood all the way to the top.

Evidence from Thursday’s Exchanges

1252-18 / PX0458
Exhibit tying Michael Rapino directly to the Jonas Brothers venue-demand controversy, including internal discussion of Ticketmaster-related asks, rebate pressure, and complaints about targeting AXS venues.

1252-15 / PX0476
Related Jonas Brothers email chain showing Live Nation’s proposed demands on venues, including a per-ticket add-on, a Ticketmaster bump, and preferred rent terms.

1252-16 / PX0715
Internal exchange warning employees not to use “crush” competitor language in messages that could later be reviewed by DOJ, underscoring awareness of how such conduct would look to regulators.

1252-9 / PX0712 A
Email describing a signed Ticketmaster contract for a new Minneapolis venue as “step one completed,” with the expectation that broader exclusivity would follow.

1252-22 / PX0417
Internal strategy document suggesting a venue deal’s value included the “opportunity cost” of losing Ticketmaster earnings if the venue stayed with or moved to a competitor.