"I'm Not Paying This Anymore" — Beau & Becky Franzel on the Ticketmaster Monopoly Ruling

Beau and returning guest Becky Franzel — Milwaukee author and lifelong rock fan — react to the 2026 Ticketmaster and Live Nation antitrust ruling, and what it means for rock fans who have been watching concert ticket prices spiral out of control for years. On April 15, 2026, a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally monopolized the live events industry and overcharged consumers — a verdict that 33 states and the District of Columbia had been fighting for. The jury found Ticketmaster overcharged concertgoers as a direct result of its anticompetitive practices. Live Nation has stated it plans to appeal. Under a separate DOJ settlement reached earlier in the trial, Live Nation agreed to cap ticketing service fees at 15%, allow competitors like SeatGeek and StubHub to offer tickets to its events, and divest exclusive booking agreements with 13 amphitheaters. The remaining states that didn't settle are now moving to a remedies trial — one possible outcome being a forced breakup and divestiture of Ticketmaster from Live Nation entirely. Beau and Becky talk about what this ruling means for everyday rock fans — the ones who stopped going to shows not because they stopped caring about live music, but because the math simply stopped making sense. And what a genuinely competitive ticketing market could look like for independent venues, artists, and fans if the breakup actually happens. Give us your thoughts on this in the comments. This clip is from Episode 32 of The Sonic Road Podcast, out now on YouTube, Spotify & Apple Podcasts. 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to The Sonic Road Podcast: https://linktr.ee/thesonicroad 📚 FIND BECKY FRANZEL: beckyfranzel.com | awshuckspub.com 📲 FOLLOW THE SONIC ROAD PODCAST: @thesonicroad Instagram | TikTok | Facebook | X ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #Ticketmaster #LiveNation #TicketmasterMonopoly #Antitrust #LiveNationVerdict #ConcertTickets #TicketPrices #TheSonicRoadPodcast #BeckyFranzel #RockPodcast #LiveMusic #ConcertFans #MusicIndustry #TicketmasterBreakup #IndependentVenues #RockMusic #HeavyRock #LiveMusicCommunity #MusicPodcast #ConcertLife ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━