Good afternoon. It was great seeing many of you this week at Pollstar Live in Los Angeles. Those guys do a great job putting on the conference, but there was one familiar face missing from the mix that I’m dying to hear from. Where the heck is Tim Leiweke? He’s been MIA since he was pardoned by Trump. If you have a beat on Leiweke’s whereabouts, drop me a line. I’m dying to talk to him!

For more than a decade, Live Nation had tried to mitigate against a DOJ antitrust case. It trained its employees on how to discuss and untangle its venue ticketing business from its concert business. It negotiated significant settlement agreements with DOJ lawyers and it spent millions lobbying politicians and currying favor with the Trump Adminstration.

Despite those efforts, after a six-week trial, it took a jury of nine men and women in a Manhattan courtroom only a few days to delivery a unanimous verdict against the company. The jury found a preponderance of evidence that the company engaged in anticompetitive behavior and exclusionary conduct. First, it ruled that Live Nation monopolized the venue ticketing market, the essential pipeline through which millions of fans purchase access to live events. Second, it found that the company monopolized the artist-amphitheater market through its ownership and operation of outdoor concert venues. 

The outcome is a remarkable win for the coalition of more than 30 state attorneys general who took on the case after the DOJ withdrew from the case after just one week of trial. It was the kind of dramatic exit that could have doomed the litigation entirely. Instead, private litigator Jeffrey Kessler stepped in following a four-day pause in proceedings, picked up the thread, and pressed forward on behalf of the state attorneys general he represented. Kessler was walking into a complex, high-stakes antitrust case mid-trial, against one of the most heavily resourced corporate legal teams in the entertainment industry. The fact that he secured a win — not just a partial finding, but a verdict covering two distinct markets — elevates this outcome from a legal footnote into something potentially historic.

Here are five takeaways from the case to help explain how we got here:

After two quiet years, Justin Bieber's return to the stage sent Coachella tickets flying out the door faster than ever. But where Beliebers go, scammers follow.

Hundreds of fans who shelled out up to $5,000 for a wristband that normally costs $600 showed up to the desert only to find out their ticket was worthless. Resellers on sites like StubHub took their money, then cancelled the sales when they realized they could squeeze even more cash out of the next desperate buyer — leaving real fans locked out of the festival they'd already spent thousands to attend.

Late last year, a Klimt sold for the highest price ever paid for modern art at auction.

An outlier sure, but it wasn't a fluke. U.S. auction sales grew 23.1% in 2025. The $1-5mm segment even grew 40.8% YoY.

Now, the S&P, teetering on all time highs, just posted its worst quarter since 2022, oil was up 94% (briefly), and Moody's puts recession odds at 48.6%.

So, that's where it gets interesting.

Each environment is unique, but after dot-com, post war and contemporary art grew about 24% annually for a decade. After 2008, about 11% for 12 years.

It’s also had near-zero correlation with the S&P 500 since ‘95.*

Now, Masterworks lets you invest in shares of artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso.

Shares can sell quickly, but my subscribers can skip the waitlist:

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^{*Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.}

Kingscrowd Capital's senior analyst reviewed RISE Robotics and projected potential growth to a $500 million valuation. The community round is open now on Wefunder. You don't have to be an institutional investor to get in at today's price.

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