WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 31: U.S. President Donald Trump listens as entertainer Kid Rock speaks during an executive order signing event in the Oval Office of the White House on March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump has signed an executive order against ticket scalping and reforming the live entertainment ticket industry. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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Why is Live Nation such a prosperous corporation? The question itself will surely elicit rolled-eye, haughty responses.
The answer is so simple, right? Live Nation resides at or near the top of the concert and ticketing sectors of the entertainment industry because it, in the words of the Washington Post, is “a concert promoter, artist manager, venue owner, and ticket seller and reseller,” among other things.
Except that the answer is wholly insufficient, and worse than that, flat out incorrect. Starting with insufficient and as evidenced by Live Nation’s gradual expansion into myriad aspects of the concert industry, what Live Nation became was no simple, obvious feat. Had it been, as in had it been evident that becoming “a concert promoter, artist manager, venue owner, and ticket seller and reseller” was the path to growth that left the competition in the dust, then Live Nation wouldn’t be Live Nation as you read this, and most certainly wouldn’t be enduring Senate hearings, antitrust lawsuits from the Department of Justice (DOJ), and attacks from Kid Rock. Why’s that?
The answer is simple: if Live Nation’s path to remarkable success had been remotely certain, then it couldn’t have expanded as it did. The cost would have been too substantial. Which is a long way of saying that Live Nation prospers at least somewhat because its executives uniquely saw a future in the concert space that its competitors did not. And that’s far from the whole story.
It’s easily forgotten that another major reason Live Nation is so prosperous in the present has to do with the fact that its executives didn’t panic at a time when the company was not so prosperous. Think back to the spread of the novel coronavirus in 2020, and the subsequent panic not just within the political class, but also within the U.S. population.
Supposedly the virus was going to change everything. There was even speculation that the days of shaking hands were in the rearview mirror owing to a growing belief that the very humans who have long driven all progress by working closely together were suddenly a lethal threat to one another. If so, handshakes wouldn’t have been the only casualty of the virus.
Stop and think about what this meant for Live Nation, a formerly thriving commercial entity that achieved commercial success via – yes – live shows the excitement and success of which was rooted in the big, packed crowds that would attend them. To say that the shares of Live Nation plummeted amidst the panic of 2020 insults understatement, but it also calls for attention from the DOJ, Kid Rock, and the various politics-based critics of Live Nation.
They lament its near-term dominance, all the while glossing over just how close Live Nation came to obsolescence thanks to what happened just six years ago. Thankfully for Live Nation and its shareholders, the company’s executives did not panic, and specifically did not sell off now-valuable assets that weren’t so valuable not terribly long ago.
Which answers the questions that the DOJ should be asking but isn’t, all the while calling into serious question that same DOJ’s antitrust suit against Live Nation. It prospers today not because it acquired dominance, but because it saw a future that no one else did and stuck to its guns when all around them were losing their heads. Rather than facing attacks from the DOJ, U.S. Senators, and Kid Rock, as you read this all three should be showering Live Nation with bouquets considering its success against some of the steepest of odds.