{"id":2325356,"date":"2026-03-12T20:18:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T20:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2325356"},"modified":"2026-03-12T20:18:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T20:18:21","slug":"live-nation-employees-brag-about-price-gouging-customers-so-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/live-nation-employees-brag-about-price-gouging-customers-so-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Nation Employees Brag About Price-Gouging Customers: ‘So Stupid’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tAfter Live Nation Entertainment reached a tentative settlement<\/a> with the U.S. Department of Justice in their antitrust case earlier this week, newly released court documents show a series of messages between two Live Nation<\/a> employees in which they bragged about \u201cprice gouging\u201d customers, \u201crobbing them blind\u201d and calling them \u201cso stupid\u201d for paying inflated costs.<\/p>\n

\n\tA 2022 conversation between Ben Baker and Jeff Weinhold, two regional directors of ticketing for Live Nation venues, focused on raising \u201cancillary fees\u201d like parking and lawn chair rentals at the expense of the ticket buyer.<\/p>\n

\n\tPer Bloomberg<\/a> and court records, Baker wrote that \u201cthese people are so stupid\u201d for paying such high fees. Weinhold noted that he had VIP parking at a show priced up to $250 for one spot. \u201cI almost feel bad taking advantage of them,\u201d responded Baker.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn another exchange, Baker bragged about charging \u201c$50 to park in the grass\u201d and \u201c$60 for closer grass.\u201d \u201cRobbing them blind, baby,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThat\u2019s how we do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLive Nation previously sought to exclude the exchanges from the antitrust trial, while an attorney for the Justice Department argued that it gave a \u201ccandid, contemporaneous look into how they view prices.\u201d Judge Aran Subramanian, who is presiding over the case, ordered that the documents be released in full.<\/p>\n

\n\tA Live Nation representative said in a statement to Variety<\/em> that the messages shared between Baker and Weinhold do not represent the company\u2019s values: \u201cThe Slack exchange from one junior staffer to a friend absolutely doesn\u2019t reflect our values or how we operate. Because this was a private Slack message, leadership learned of this when the public did, and will be looking into the matter promptly. Our business only works when fans have great experiences, which is why we\u2019ve capped amphitheater venue fees at 15% and have invested $1 billion in the last 18 months into U.S. venues and fan amenities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBaker was most recently head of ticketing for Live Nation\u2019s Venue Nation, and was expected to testify this week in the DOJ\u2019s antitrust trial, while Weinhold is senior ticketing director in the Washington area, per the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tLive Nation reached its tentative settlement with the DOJ on Monday in a case that had threatened to separate the company from its subsidiary Ticketmaster. However, a total of 27 states will continue their individual legal actions against the company, which were filed in tandem with the DOJ\u2019s, including New York, California and Colorado.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After Live Nation Entertainment reached a tentative settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in their antitrust case earlier this week, newly released court documents show a series of messages between two Live Nation employees in which they bragged about \u201cprice gouging\u201d customers, \u201crobbing them blind\u201d and calling them \u201cso stupid\u201d for paying inflated costs. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2325357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[27786],"class_list":["post-2325356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-live-nation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Live-Nation-Employees-Brag-About-Price-Gouging-Customers-So-Stupid.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2325356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2325358,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325356\/revisions\/2325358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2325357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2325356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2325356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2325356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}