“It could all be so easy if the people up top didn’t see the audience as a faceless group to extort money from,” the musician/producer said
Jack Antonoff expressed his dismay with recent comments from Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino about concert tickets being “underpriced” with more room to rise, saying, ”This really breaks my heart and is a sick way of looking at it.”
On X Thursday, Sept. 25, Antonoff shared some of Rapino’s comments from the CNBC and Boardroom Game Plan conference last week, where the CEO appeared to push back on the notion that concert tickets are becoming too expensive. Rapino argued that music is “underappreciated,” especially compared to sports, adding, “We have a lot of runway left. So when you read about ticket prices going up, the average concert price is still $72. Try going to a Laker game for that… The concert is underpriced and has been for a long time.”
Antonoff appeared to rebuff this assertion, especially in light of the way the extremely active resale markets often push prices to exorbitantly high points. “Answer is simple: selling a ticket for more than its face value should be illegal,” he wrote. “Then there is no chaos and you give us back the control instead of creating a bizarre free market of confusion amongst the audience who we love and care for.”
The musician/producer went on to say that he often talks to his team about these issues and tries to “think of new ideas” to get around them. He vowed to keep doing that, but also suggested the easiest way to get more affordable concert tickets into the hands of fans was to change things systematically: “It could all be so easy if the people up top didn’t see the audience as a faceless group to extort money from.”
A rep for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment.
Rapino’s comments at the Game Plan conference notably came one day before the Federal Trade Commission sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster for engaging in “illegal practices that injure artists, cause consumers to pay significantly more for event tickets, and benefit Defendant’s bottom line.”
The suit alleged that Ticketmaster hides fees from customers until they check out and allows ticket brokers to “exceed” the limits artists place on the number of tickets people are allowed to purchase at once. The FTC also accused Ticketmaster and Live Nation of allowing scalpers to scoop up millions of tickets so they can be resold on Ticketmaster’s own resale platform at steep markups to customers. (Ticketmaster and Live Nation have yet to respond to the suit.)
Additionally, Live Nation is still facing a separate antitrust suit brought by the Department of Justice. That complaint accuses Live Nation of operating as a monopoly, a charge the company has denied. The suit remains ongoing.
