On September 4, 2026, AAI filed public comments in United States v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., No. 1:24-cv-03973 (S.D.N.Y. filed May 24, 2024), urging the court to apply the correct standard of review under the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act (the “Tunney Act”) before determining whether the Department of Justice’s proposed settlement of its monopolization case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster is “within the reaches of the public interest” under the Act.
AAI’s comments argue that a settlement compromised by an undisclosed side deal cannot be within the reaches of the public interest as a matter of law, and that numerous credible reports raise questions about whether that is what happened here. Those reports suggest DOJ may have accepted materially less relief than its complaint said was “necessary”—including forgoing the divestiture of Ticketmaster it had called for “at minimum”—in exchange for Live Nation’s help improving bookings at the Kennedy Center, following a lobbying campaign that reportedly reached the Oval Office and led the government’s own trial team and state co-plaintiffs to be cut out of the negotiations. Thirty-four states declined to join the federal settlement, proceeded to trial on the same evidence, and won a unanimous verdict awarding the highest per-ticket damages figure their expert had calculated, undercutting any suggestion that DOJ settled for less than the minimum necessary divestiture because its litigation position had weakened.
AAI’s comments trace the Tunney Act’s history to a Nixon administration scandal in 1971 that also involved a suspected side deal reached in settling an antitrust case, which prompted Congress to write extensive public-notice, transparency, and lobbying-disclosure requirements into the settlement-review process. That history, AAI argues, forecloses the position DOJ recently pressed in the Tunney Act proceeding concerning its settlement with Hewlett Packard Enterprises: that judicial review under the Act cannot reach the government’s motivations for settling at all. AAI’s comments show that argument to be squarely at odds with both the statute’s text and its legislative history, and they urge the court to conduct the “meaningful review” of DOJ’s settlement motivations that the Tunney Act was designed to make possible, and which is meant to protect the public interest in competitive markets by assuring public confidence in the consent decree process.
