Court Exhibit·27 FEB 2021
Rapino and Leiweke Discuss Outbidding SeatGeek for a Major Venue Deal
A candid 2021 exchange between Live Nation's CEO and a major venue operator, later entered into evidence in the DOJ's antitrust suit, offers a rare window into how Ticketmaster's executives framed competitive pressure from rival ticketing platforms.
Source document — United States v. Live Nation Entertainment & Ticketmaster — Exhibit PX0076 · United States v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. & Ticketmaster L.L.C. · 1:24-cv-03973 (NYSD), Doc. 1275-9, filed 2026-03-20
Excerpt · In Tim Leiweke & Michael Rapino's own words
On Feb 27, 2021, Tim Leiweke wrote to Michael Rapino and Irving Azoff: "Three bids, u, sg, axs. Your $6 million behind. You don't need them. We are going to take most of their music. Lousy union deals and bad loud in out."
Rapino replied: "Yes they want all the secondary money that seatgeek offering them. We tried many time to tell them can't give them 90% on secondary because the artist has to approve and if they do approve we want to play the artist so taking 90 from seatgeek sounds like 6 million but no artist will ever approve it so they won't ever actually get the money."
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How this surfaced
- Source type
- Court Exhibit
- Case / record
- United States v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. & Ticketmaster L.L.C.
- Citation
- 1:24-cv-03973 (NYSD), Doc. 1275-9, filed 2026-03-20
- Date authored
- February 27, 2021
- License
- Public domain
- Original
- View the primary source →
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