Jack Antonoff speaks on stage at “Up Close & Personal” In My Studio With…Jack Antonoff at The Village Recording Studio on Aug. 11, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Unique Nicole | Getty Images
Acclaimed music producer Jack Antonoff is rejecting claims by Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino that concert tickets are still “underpriced.”
The CEO’s comments came at the CNBC Sport and Boardroom Game Plan conference last week, when he said, “In sports, I joke it’s like a badge of honor to spend [$70,000] for Knicks courtside. … When you read about the ticket prices going up, it’s still an average concert price [of] $72. Try going to a Laker game for that, and there’s 80 of them [in a season].”
Antonoff responded to those comments in a post on X Thursday saying, “this really breaks my heart and is a sick way of looking at.”
“Answer is simple: Selling a ticket for more than its face value should be illegal,” he wrote. “Then there is no chaos, and you give us back the control instead of creating a bizarre free market of confusion amongst the audience who we love and care for.”
Antonoff, famous for working with superstar Taylor Swift, also pointed to ticket resellers allegedly hiking prices on the Live Nation site. He went on to say his team tries to find “new ideas” to get around things like dynamic pricing to make concerts more affordable for fans.
“It could all be so easy if the people up top didn’t see the audience as a faceless group to extort money from,” Antonoff wrote.
Rapino’s comments at the Game Plan conference came just days before the Federal Trade Commission sued Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster for what it called “illegal” ticket resale tactics. In the filing, the FTC explained that the companies “tacitly worked” with scalpers that enabled them to “unlawfully purchase” tickets to increase profits.
″[Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s] illegal conduct frustrates artists’ desire to maintain affordable ticket prices that fit the needs of ordinary American families, costing ordinary fans millions of Dollars every year,” the lawsuit read.
Live Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Live Nation is also being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice to break up the company over alleged antitrust violation.
“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a May 2024 statement announcing the lawsuit.
