The Live Nation C-suite was obviously hoping that - by committing to hand over a neat $280 million in damages - the 40 US states involved in the big antitrust trial against the live music company would follow the US Department Of Justice’s lead and settle the case.
But so too, presumably, was at least one more junior Live Nation employee: ie Benjamin Baker, the ticketing exec behind the “we’re robbing them blind, baby!” Slack post. Mainly so he wouldn’t be forced to explain his Slack messages in court.
However, more than 30 of those US states did not join the DoJ in settling the case, which means the trial that is scrutinising the allegedly anticompetitive conduct of Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary has continued in a New York court this week. And on Tuesday, Baker was the star witness.
Court papers last week revealed old Slack messages between Baker and his colleague Jeff Weinhold joking about how they were randomly hiking up prices for ‘ancillary services’ around shows at Live Nation’s amphitheater venues in the US, including parking and VIP access.
Baker told his colleague “I gouge them on ancil prices”, before adding “I almost feel bad taking advantage of them” and then quipping that he was “robbing them blind, baby - that’s how we do it”.
Baker was questioned about those messages in court earlier this week by Jeffrey Kessler, a lawyer representing the US states in the case.
Given Baker still works at Live Nation - and has been promoted twice since the 2022 Slack posts we got to see last week - he was unsurprisingly keen to distance his employer from his comments. His testimony could be pretty much summed up as follows: “I was stupid, I’m sorry, please don’t sack me”.
Stressing that he was “speaking for myself, not Live Nation as a whole”, Baker said that - when bantering with Weinhold back in 2022 - he was mainly trying to “convey surprise” that concert-goers were willing to pay high prices for certain extra services, like prime parking spots and access to VIP areas.
“I used very immature and regrettable language, and that was not the language I was trying to convey”, he added at one point, according to the Associated Press. But his “poor immature language”, he said, was merely “conveying my surprise that the market dictated fans were willing to pay $50 to park closer” to the venue.
Unsurprisingly, Kessler gave the Live Nation exec a pretty hard time about it all. When Baker pointed out that he and Weinhold were discussing the pricing of “optional” extras and not ticket prices, the lawyer responded it was “also optional not to exploit every single dollar you can extract from these fans”.
And when Baker discussed how the revenues from ancillary services had risen, Kessler hit back by quoting the ticket exec. “What you were really doing”, he said, was “robbing them blind, baby”.
While Baker’s Slack posts were definitely embarrassing for Live Nation, its lawyers - who declined to question Baker in court - will nevertheless dispute the argument put forward by the states that the ticketing exec’s ambivalence to pricing and his customers was only possible because of Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s unlawful monopoly. It remains to be seen if the jury is convinced of that.
Presumably Baker himself will be hoping they are. Asked by Kessler if he’d been demoted or had his pay cut since his old Slack posts went public, Baker told the court “No sir, not at this time”.