Grammy-winning producer-songwriter Jack Antonoff slammed Dwell Nation CEO Michael Rapino’s current declare that live performance tickets are “underpriced,” calling the attitude “a sick manner of it.”
In a social media put up, Antonoff highlighted a phase of Rapino’s feedback on the CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Sport Plan convention final week wherein he mentioned,
“Music has been underappreciated,” Rapino mentioned, particularly in comparison with sports activities. “In sports activities, I joke it’s like a badge of honor to spend 70 grand for a Knicks courtside [seat]. They beat me up if we cost $800 for Beyoncé.”
He added, “We have now lots of runway left. So if you examine ticket costs going up, the typical live performance value continues to be $72. Attempt going to a Laker recreation for that, and there’s 80 of them. The live performance is underpriced and has been for a very long time.”
Antonoff wrote, “This breaks my coronary heart and is a extremely sick manner of it. [The] reply is straightforward: promoting a ticket for greater than its face worth must be unlawful. Then there isn’t a chaos and also you give us again the management as a substitute of making a weird free market of confusion amongst the viewers who we love and take care of.
“As at all times when i learn issues like that, I name my individuals straight away to think about new concepts round it,” he continued. “We’ll by no means cease doing that. It might all be really easy if the individuals up high didn’t see the viewers as a faceless group to extort cash from.”
Antonoff is finest generally known as a high producer for Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Lorde, Doja Cat and lots of others, however he fronts and excursions commonly with the band Bleachers.
Rapino made his assertion simply days earlier than the Federal Trade Commission sued Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster for what it referred to as “unlawful” ticket resale techniques. Within the submitting, the FTC defined that the businesses “tacitly labored” with scalpers that enabled them to “unlawfully buy” tickets to extend earnings.
The businesses’ “unlawful conduct frustrates artists’ want to take care of inexpensive ticket costs that match the wants of strange American households, costing strange followers hundreds of thousands of {dollars} yearly,” the lawsuit learn.
The corporate can also be being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice to interrupt up the corporate over alleged antitrust violations. Then-Lawyer Normal Merrick Garland mentioned in an announcement saying the lawsuit, “We allege that Dwell Nation depends on illegal, anticompetitive conduct to train its monopolistic management over the dwell occasions trade in the US at the price of followers, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators.”
Rapino has made such feedback earlier than. Final yr he instructed buyers at a Goldman Sachs convention that concert events are “extremely inexpensive” in comparison with sporting occasions, citing statistics stating that “75% of tickets are beneath $100” and “half beneath $50.” In 2023, he instructed blogger Bob Lefsetz that artists might “cost a bit extra” for tickets.
The CEO’s selection of statistics look like selective. In response to trade commerce publication Pollstar, the typical ticket value for main excursions reached document highs in 2024, averaging $123, with high excursions like Dangerous Bunny ($290), Justin Timberlake ($216), and Nicki Minaj ($149) hovering effectively previous the typical Rapino cited.
Nevertheless, it’s common data that the ticketing trade is rife with corruption, with scalpers and secondary-ticketing platforms charging exponentially greater than face worth for tickets. Congress has tried many instances over time to drive investigations into the trade, to little impact.
A rep for Dwell Nation didn’t instantly reply to Selection’s request for remark.
Live Nation had average posted complete income of $23 billion in 2024, a small improve over 2023’s $22.7 billion, which was up 36% from 2022.
