Live Nation is in charge of everything: Tickets, venues and bands, bouncers and food.

Chappell Roane, the American pop sensation who is behind the hit song Pink Pony Club will be welcomed on stage by over 2,000 fans in Scotland next Sunday.

Most of them probably have never heard of Live Nation Entertainment, a major company. Each of them has contributed in ways that they never imagined to the billions of dollars in revenue generated by Live Nation Entertainment this year.

Live Nation has a significant stake in O2 Academy Glasgow. This means that it gets a cut of every hot dog or pint of beer sold to fans. It is the owner of the security firm that provides bouncers at the entrance and in the venue.

The company also owns Ticketmaster, which is the website where the majority of Roan fans bought tickets to his show.

Live Nation also has a close relationship with SJM, who organised Roan’s The Midwest Princess Tour. They work with her manager in booking the venues, communicating with the ticketing agent and handling the publicity.

The Live Nation leviathan appears to dominate every aspect of the live music industry.

‘s ticketing subsidiary Ticketmaster was at the center of a controversy last week after its “dynamic price” tool Platinum, which is known as Platinum in this case, was used to raise prices while an estimated ten millions fans were competing for approximately one million tickets. Prices rose as high as $£355, far above the advertised £148 price.

Ticketmaster implemented this system to reduce the margins that resellers can make on secondary ticket sales. Platinum has hit a political chord in the UK. Sir Keir starmer promised to “grab” the ticketing industry. The Competition & Markets Authority has launched an investigation. Oasis has distanced itself from its decision to implement “dynamic pricing”.

While the attention has been primarily on Ticketmaster’s pricing model, this debacle could shine a spotlight on Live Nation’s dominance over the music industry. This is at a time where it is facing a “monopoly lawsuit” in its own country.

Live Nation has 85 subsidiaries in the UK and Ireland, whether they are owned by Live Nation or through shareholdings.

At least 28 venues, including festivals, are included in its UK investments. All O2 Academy sites are located in major cities, including London, Bristol Glasgow, Edinburgh Liverpool and Leicester. Live Nation is a co-owner of Festival Republic, the festival promoter that runs Reading and Leeds, Wireless, Latitude, and the Great Escape. It also holds investments in Isle of Wight Festival, Boomtown and Wireless.

MCD Promotions, DF Concerts and two other promoters are also subsidiaries of its company. Quest is a UK-based artist management group that represents Sir Paul McCartney, Shania Twain and other stars. Roc Nation, a US-based company, works with British artists Corinne Bailey Rae and Jess Glynne as well as US superstars such as Christina Aguilera and Rihanna. Live Nation owns several merchandising firms that are active in the music business.

Live Nation UK’s concert promotion arm was involved in over 2,500 concerts, attracting 5.9 million people. Its revenue totaled £312 millions, which is equivalent to £53 for each admission. This was up from £39 per admission in 2013. These figures exclude Ticketmaster UK which reported revenues of £127 millions in 2022.

AEG Presents (which owns the O2 Arena) was involved in 1,071 events in 2022 according to its UK account, and sold 1.7 Million tickets. It reported revenues totaling £224 million. AXS (its ticketing platform) reported revenues of £22 Million.

The face value of a ticket is divided between the artist and their manager, as well as the promotion company. This can be around 10% for large shows, or even more when smaller artists are performing. The venue and ticket issuer split the added fees which can be as high as 25 percent of the face price.

If a ticket costs £100, the Live Nation Promotion business will take £10, and the remainder is split between the artist, their management (which may include Live Nation), and the venue. The salesman (usually Ticketmaster) will take a third of the £25 booking fee. The rest goes to the venue which may also be a part of Live Nation.

The Sunday Times contacted many artists and managers for comments on Live Nation’s dominance in the music industry. Most declined to comment. An industry insider warned artists not to speak out for fear of losing festival and gig appearances. He said that “everyone is scared” of the group.

Smaller bands, however, were more willing to speak, even if they did so under the condition of anonymity. One Liverpool-based band’s lead singer said: “I find Ticketmaster and Live Nation to be an absolute outrage for charging whatever they want for tickets. Especially since musicians don’t get a fair share.” It’s a complete lack of compassion and total greed, especially when it comes to up-and coming artists.

“They take the majority of the ticket sales so we started to put on gigs independently. Many smaller bands are unaware that they can do this and earn their own money.

“We have made a conscious choice to avoid Live Nation and Ticketmaster.” I’m certain that at some point in the future we will [engage].

Reg Walker, the owner of The Iridium Consultancy which specializes in ticketing said that Live Nation had a near monopoly. It has a small stake in what it does not own outright.

As a promoter they can offer artists eye-watering sums of money, sometimes even more than they are worth. They can also secure international tours for their artists over their competitors, as they own the ticket sales.

It’s a great business, but there comes a point when it can become so large that, simply by its size, it chokes out any competition. You need competition in order to keep prices competitive.

Live Nation Entertainment, a $22 billion company, can trace its origins back to Arizona, in 1975. A group of friends, including Albert Leffler and Peter Gadwa, a computer programmer who sold ticketing hardware, founded Ticketmaster.

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, acquired the company in 1993. A sports and music enthusiast, Allen saw the potential to grow Ticketmaster as internet usage began to increase among American households. Ticketmaster launched its website two years later. It promised to make buying tickets easier for fans, who would no longer have to deal with phone orders or queues at the box office.

Robert Sillerman (a New York born radio and media entrepreneur) began acquiring concert-promotion businesses around the same time. He created a growing empire he named SFX. Sillerman sold his business in 2000 to US media giant Clear Channel, for $4.4 billion. The new owner then split the company into two new companies named Live Nation and Live Nation.

Ticketmaster, which was also busy buying companies, was growing its market share by purchasing smaller competitors.

In 2009, both companies were dominant in their respective fields. In the US at the time, the companies were listed and agreed to a marriage which would result in a music giant.

Bruce Springsteen, who warned it would create “a near monopoly” as well as “make the current situation for fans even worse” was vocal in his opposition to the deal. But competition watchdogs around the world eventually approved the deal. The UK regulator, known at the time as the Competition Commission approved the deal despite originally saying it would block the merger. The US approved the deal after Ticketmaster agreed to license its software out to rival companies.

Live Nation, a global company with more than 765 millions fans, generated $23 billion in revenues (£17.5billion) from this sector last year. Ticketmaster, while a profitable company, made most of its revenue from the concerts division. It promoted 50,000 concerts for 6,800 touring musicians, including Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles.

Live Nation’s management companies have 380 or more artists under their care.

Michael Rapino is the chief executive of the company and a father-of-three who is married to Star Trek: Enterpriseactress Jolene blalock. He’s one of America’s highest paid bosses. He earned $139 million in 2022, which included a $117 million performance-related bonus. It’s not bad for someone who began his career as a Labatt Breweries sales representative, and promoted bands in local bars around Ontario.

His modest $23 million last year included a bill of $1 million for “personal security at his residence and while on personal travel”, $615,000 for the personal use private jets and $75,000 for automobile allowance.

Joe Berchtold is the president and chief financial of Live Nation. He earned $52 million by 2022 thanks to large stock payments, and over $6 million in 2018. Berchtold was not concerned by the seemingly interminable increases in ticket costs. His total compensation package included $78,315 for tickets to Live Nation events and other sporting events.

Live Nation Entertainment is now facing the possibility of being broken apart by the US Government. The Justice Department filed a suit in May describing the company as “a monopoly” which “thwarts the competition across markets within the live entertainment industry”. This was to the detriment for fans, artists, and venues.

Live Nation management is clearly on the front burner of their agenda today, as a lawsuit by the US Government could be damaging.

There are signs, however, that the Oasis protests on this side cause alarm in executive suites back in the US.

Berchtold, Live Nation’s CEO, admitted to investors last week at a Bank of America Conference that Ticketmaster must now offer “better communication” to fans and “better transparence”.

He added, “I would love for the front row to be a mile wide at $39 per ticket — but that’s not possible.” “I understand that Ticketmaster is sometimes criticized when ten millions people want to purchase one million tickets… it’s the nature of our industry.”

Berchtold, when asked about Live Nation’s fight against the Justice Department lawsuit, said that he expected the company to “prevail”. He added: “I do not expect major changes in how we operate as we go through the process.”

A spokesperson for Live Nation UK said that the UK was one of the most competitive markets around the globe when it came to promotions, venues, and ticketing.

Bob Lefsetz is an American music analyst who defended Live Nation in his blog. He noted that it was up to the artists and managers to decide if they wanted to use the Platinum Pricing Model. He said, “The acts are hiding behind Ticketmaster because that’s what they get paid for.” “Ticketmaster does not make any music. It is inert and can therefore accept all of the blame. Ticketmaster doesn’t do anything that the band hasn’t agreed to. Nothing.”

A spokesperson for Ticketmaster said that criticisms of the company were “incorrect”, pointing to the fact that it doesn’t “set prices”. The spokesperson added that Ticketmaster would be cooperating with the CMA’s investigation and “sharing more facts with them about the ticket sales”.

The Platinum ticketing fiasco, even if Ticketmaster was not at fault, will remain in the minds of many fans for a long time.

Abi White is a 27-year-old social media manager in Manchester who makes videos for TikTok about how to get concert tickets under the @abisguidetogigs account. However, she missed out on Oasis’ tickets. She explained: “I had planned to give my father a surprise Christmas ticket. I did everything that I had said, including creating three separate Ticketmaster account on three different devices. After five hours, I was finally able to access the website at 2pm and I put the tickets into my basket. But then I noticed that they had increased in price. “Wait, this isn’t right!” I thought.

She added, echoing many other people’s nostalgia for the Nineties last week: “I prefer to queue up physically, so that you can see if you have a chance to get the tickets, and where the Internet won’t kick you off.”