The Leadership Letter

Real correspondence from the people running real companies — and what it reveals about leadership.

When You Already Own the Market, Your Deal Goal Changes

When you already have most of the volume, the only deal worth signing is one that locks in the future and protects what you have.

We are aiming to go back to Francesca and Andy with our response on their proposed deal terms.

At a high level, we suggest accepting most of the fixed $s but clarifying: 1. Deal structure / royalty splits 2. True-ups for volume miss (or if over-deliver) 3. All int'l deals are outside of deal for now: we suggest including Manchester in this deal since venue is further along than others

The 'win' for TM is extending term with same economics and structure and then incentivizing OVG to convert all the Pac buildings to TM.

High level summary: 10 year deal to 2032 (all coterminous) with [REDACTED] upfront bonus. Annual sponsorship for 360 buildings (62 arenas) — outstanding question on whether to push back here: TM has 2/3rds of these buildings already and most would not warrant fixed sponsorship on own.

Deal template: 360 buildings (Spectra buildings, smaller markets, etc.) — this is consistent with current royalty splits but we are swapping fixed per ticket for variable rate.

Volume assumptions: TM suggests pro rata up/down adjustment based on prior year volume. So if OVG model says 10M tickets and they do 8M, the next year we claw back [REDACTED] of the prior year sponsorship total.

In reply, Joe Berchtold wrote: 'Agree all about getting enough to justify [REDACTED]/yr in sponsorship esp when already have most tickets and shortfall mechanism.'

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Court Exhibit
United States v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. & Ticketmaster L.L.C.
1:24-cv-03973 (NYSD), Doc. 1335-17, filed 2026-03-27
August 12, 2022
Public domain
View the primary source →