This article was originally posted on Vinyl Culture
Here is a statement from a prominent artist manager:
“20% of nothing is nothing.”
That’s what Ben Mawson told Music Business Worldwide in an interview back in 2018, explaining what it means to manage artists on a percentage and why a manager has to really believe in an artist. It’s a good line. Factual and to the point.
This was also the period when Ellie Goulding joined his company, TaP Management. But according to a legal claim issued in the UK, there was something she says nobody told her. (TaP’s parent company is owned by Live Nation.)
The claim says that the live music giant bought 50.1% stake in 2015 and the rest in 2019. Goulding was managed there from 2018 through 2025, at a 20% commission. Over those years she signed deals with Live Nation companies covering touring, merchandise and a documentary film.
Hold that thought, because this isn’t an isolated story. Since mid-August, three separate stories have described the same monopolistic machine from three different angles.
Ideally, the person who manages you, the platform that sells your ticket, and the remedy meant to restrain a company with a stronghold on an entire industry should have nothing to do with each other. But as you will see, they increasingly do…
Ellie Goulding’s Lawsuit | Who Was Her Manager Really Working For?
For clarification, Ellie Goulding’s claim names Ben Mawson, his co-founder Ed Millett, and TaP’s parent company, HNOE Ltd. Live Nation is not a defendant and is not directly accused of wrongdoing here.
But the argument is that Mawson and Millett were effectively Live Nation employees. According to the claim, that gave them a reason to have a personal interest in Live Nation’s dealings with their clients. This conflicted with her interests & need to get the best terms from whichever promoter or merchandiser suited her. It also alleges that they were contractually barred from encouraging any artist they managed to stop doing business with the Live Nation group. She wants unspecified damages for breach of fiduciary duty.
The ownership trail is public.
The UK government’s “Companies House Search Service” has records that show “Live Nation Entertainment, Inc.” holding more than 50% of HNOE. The rest sits with “Artist Nation Management Limited,” another Live Nation group company.
The claim says that Ben Mawson became HNOE’s CEO after the 2019 buyout. It also says he and Millett report to someone designated by Live Nation’s CEO, and that Live Nation has collected dividends as the controlling shareholder. Live Nation’s latest annual report says it managed about 360 artists in 2025.
None of this has been tested in court yet. Live Nation and the defendants hadn’t commented publicly when the claim was reported. Ellie Goulding has since gone back to Sarah Stennett for management and signed with William Morris Endeavor (WME) for worldwide representation.
By the way, HNOE has been here before. Angus & Julia Stone sued HNOE and their ex-manager Tim Manton in New South Wales over commission payments. In November 2024, HNOE substantially won an appeal that sent the dispute to London on a jurisdiction clause. That’s a common strategy to delay the ruling or even to get it dismissed.
This should be a warning sign for all artists. A manager’s entire job is to shop around. Fiduciary duty means loyalty.
If the person negotiating your tour reports to the company you are negotiating with, then that negotiation is basically money moving between pockets of the same coat.
Oasis ‘Platinum’ Tickets Were A Sham | Why Ireland Is Prosecuting Ticketmaster
On September 7, Ireland’s consumer watchdog, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), took Ticketmaster to the Dublin District Court. The Ticketline Unlimited Company, trading as Ticketmaster, faces two charges under the Consumer Protection Act 2007 over the August 31, 2024 sale for Oasis’s Croke Park shows.
First, offering “Platinum tickets” in a way likely to mislead consumers about what they were.
And secondly, sharing important price information in a way that was unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely.
You might remember that sale. More than 900,000 tickets went on sale that day, fans sat for hours in queues, and prices climbed dynamically during the sale. Some Dublin standing tickets went from €176 in the pre-sale to more than €400. The CCPC opened its investigation within a week in 2024, after more than 100 consumer complaints to its helpline.
Ticketmaster says it will fight back. Their lawyer told the judge that he expects the case to be fully contested. The case returns to court tomorrow, October 5, for disclosure, and a hearing of three or four days could follow before Christmas. Nothing has been proven. Ticketmaster has long said that promoters and artists set the prices. But these charges aren’t about who set the price. They are about what the fans were told, and when.
Britain took a much softer route. Its version of the complaint was UK tickets rising from £135 to £350. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found no evidence of real-time dynamic pricing, which is what most angry fans assumed.
In this case, standing tickets were split into price tiers in advance, and the pricier tier opened after the cheaper one sold out.
They did find some “Platinum tickets” sold at nearly 2.5 times the standard price with no adequate explanation that they offered any extra benefit over some standard tickets in the same areas. That truth is arguably worse than dynamic pricing. A structure fixed in advance and deliberately not explained.
The outcome of this investigation was voluntary commitments for Ticketmaster.
They were asked to give 24 hours’ notice of tiered pricing, have the price ranges shown in queues, and two years of reporting to the CMA.
There was no admission of liability, and Ticketmaster dropped the “Platinum” label from tickets sold in the UK. According to them, this is the CMA confirming that Ticketmaster “did not breach consumer law.”
And this keeps happening. In one of our previous issues titled “The Live Nation Monopoly,” we covered Mexico’s Profeco opening proceedings in February to fine Ticketmaster México over a BTS concert’s pre-sale queue irregularities and tickets appearing on resale almost instantly.
Different country. Different artists. Same complaint. Fans didn’t know exactly what they were buying…
DOJ’s Settlement With Live Nation Solves Nothing
Which brings us to a possible fix to this problem. On March 9, a week into trial, the DOJ settled with Live Nation. They were asked to divest from 13 amphitheater booking agreements, to cap Ticketmaster service fees at 15% of face value at Live Nation amphitheaters, to set aside $280 million for state damages claims, and to extend the consent decree by eight years. But most importantly,
Live Nation can keep control of Ticketmaster.
But 33 states along with D.C. disagreed & kept going with the case. On April 15, a jury found for them. They found illegal monopolization in ticketing and amphitheaters, unlawful tying, and a $1.72-per-ticket overcharge in 22 states.
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips’s analysis puts Ticketmaster at about 80% of primary ticketing at major venues and Live Nation at about 70% of major concert promotion. Live Nation is now asking the court to overturn the verdict.
Why Venues Stay With Ticketmaster | AEG’s Flywheel Argument
The comment window on the DOJ deal closed September 4, and the filings are brutal.
AEG, one of Live Nation’s competitor, wants the judge to reject the deal, order Ticketmaster be sold, and ban long-term exclusive venue contracts. According to them, this deal “does not break Ticketmaster’s grip; it tightens it.”
AEG points to the 2010 and 2020 decrees and asks why eight more years of rules would work where fifteen years of similar restrictions failed? By their math, Ticketmaster keeps about 85% of major-venue events (roughly 6,500 of 7,500 a year) with only about 170 opened to rivals. The $18 million payment to the six settling states is under 0.1% of Live Nation’s 2025 revenue of more than $25 billion, and a $5 million penalty per violation is too small to change Live Nation’s behaviour.
SeatGeek’s reaction was even more aggressive, calling the deal “a feeble gesture masquerading as a serious solution.”
They offered at least eight major venues “a retaliation insurance” against losing Live Nation shows if they switched ticket partners, and paid the Florida Panthers nearly $1 million under one such provision.
But “virtually all” of them stayed with Ticketmaster anyway.
That result is AEG’s main point. Venues sign exclusive Ticketmaster deals so they don’t lose Live Nation shows. They argue that it’s “not because Ticketmaster wins on price, service, or innovation.”
We can liken it to a flywheel. Live Nation controls the concerts, concerts force venues into Ticketmaster, and Ticketmaster’s various fees fund the whole machine. This settlement deal leaves that flywheel intact according to AEG. And they are absolutely correct…
Afraid to Speak Out? | Louis Messina’s Warning
Louis Messina, whose company has promoted tours for Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, describes the situation from an insider’s perspective. In a filing, he wrote that
Live Nation stopped returning his calls in 2024 and kept artists such as “The Lumineers” out of its amphitheaters if he was involved.
The calls resumed in 2026, after the settlement was filed. According to him, most artists, agents and managers are afraid to speak out. Even someone like him “could go out of business like other promoters who have fallen victim to Live Nation.” Read that next to Ms. Goulding’s claim about managers contractually barred from steering artists away from Live Nation, and the pattern is crystal clear.
Rival Companies Aren’t The Only Critics
Live Nation’s response through EVP Dan Wall is that AEG and SeatGeek are competitors advancing “their own commercial interests,” and that much of what they say misrepresents the settlement’s terms. They are confident that the court will approve this settlement.
Fair enough, rivals have motives. But the states that won the verdict aren’t rivals. 17 of the 33 above mentioned states and D.C. also say that the deal could entrench Ticketmaster.
They argue that none of the 13 “divestiture” venues is owned or leased by Live Nation, so it’s giving up contract rights, not selling assets.
They also note that the deal still allows exclusive contracts of up to four years, when trial evidence showed that Ticketmaster averaged 5.6 years in 2024.
They say it reappoints “the very same monitor” used for “the past two failed settlements.”
And they want discovery into how the deal was made, citing Live Nation’s own disclosures that White House Counsel officials took part in settlement communications.
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips notes that no court has ever had to review a DOJ antitrust settlement against a jury verdict like this one in the same case. Judge Arun Subramanian is therefore deciding on a situation that the courts haven’t faced before.
Who Owns Your Management, Your Ticketing Partner, and The Venues?
These three stories clearly point to a coherent structure.
A manager who allegedly answered to Live Nation. A ticket seller accused of obscuring what fans were buying. And a settlement that leaves the gatekeeper at the gate according to the states that won the verdict.
And the reach continues even further. On October 1,
Live Nation announced that it is supporting “Creator Nation” as a capital partner and a strategic backer.
This new venture plans to acquire creator-management firms. That means influencer managers are also now engaging with Live Nation, not just artist managers. The direction in which this is going is very clear.
When music is treated purely as an asset to squeeze, it alienates the people who sustain it. Artists get tangled in overlapping management and promotion deals. And fans get priced out of live music, or buy a “Platinum” ticket that wasn’t any better than the standard one.
This is a system where everybody in the chain is fully dependent on one single entity with a lot of power...
🫵🏼 What do YOU think? Do you know who your manager works for? Do you think Live Nation will eventually have to sell Ticketmaster? Let us know your thoughts…
If you are an artist, ask in writing about who owns your manager’s company and whether they have a stake in any promoter or ticket partner they recommend. If you are a fan, keep screenshots from the ticket queues.
💬 If this one got under your skin; drop a like, share your thoughts below & share this investigation with every artist and music fan you know. The future of human creativity depends on holding these companies accountable. Consider supporting artists directly through platforms like Bandcamp, where musicians set their own prices and keep a fair share of revenue.
🤝🏼 Join us at Vinyl Culture as we continue exploring ways to preserve and evolve an authentic music culture in an age dominated by algorithms and corporate interests. We are building something that will revolutionize the music industry by creating an Artist-centred and Community-driven platform, leveraging both the offline & online medium. We will empower artists by allowing them to share their art and creativity directly with the fans. More on this soon…
