The jury has already spoken. On April 15, 2026, a Manhattan federal jury found Live Nation and Ticketmaster liable on every antitrust count the states put in front of it — monopolization, exclusionary conduct, the works. What the jury did not decide is what happens next. Under the framework Judge Arun Subramanian set for the case, liability and damages went to the jury; any structural or injunctive relief — up to and including a full corporate breakup — is his call alone, to be worked out in a remedy phase that is still unfolding.

That remedy phase is now the whole ballgame, and it's tangled with a second, competing track: the DOJ's own settlement with Live Nation, reached mid-trial in March and still pending Tunney Act review, which stops well short of a breakup. Roughly two dozen states walked away from that deal and kept litigating because they wanted more. So the court is, in effect, being asked to choose between two very different visions of what "fixing" Ticketmaster looks like — and a menu of options in between. Here's how the realistic scenarios stack up, roughly ordered from most to least likely, with a rough sense of what each would cost Live Nation and how disruptive it would be to rebuild.

Likelihood: High. Cost: Low-to-moderate (low nine figures)

This is the path of least resistance, and it's already partly in motion. The DOJ deal — roughly $200–300 million in payments to settling states, divestiture of a baker's dozen (or more) amphitheaters, a 15% fee cap at Live Nation-owned amphitheaters, shorter exclusivity terms with venues, and a requirement that Ticketmaster open portions of its platform to competitors — does not touch the corporate structure at all. Ticketmaster stays inside Live Nation.

Even with holdout states pressing for more, the most probable real-world outcome is that Judge Subramanian layers additional behavioral conditions and damages on top of something resembling this framework rather than ordering a structural breakup outright — especially once appeals are factored in. Antitrust scholars who've watched the case, including Northeastern's John Kwoka, have already flagged that this kind of settlement is easy for a company the size of Live Nation to route around, and that a company earning north of $25 billion a year won't be reshaped by a few hundred million dollars and a dozen divested sheds. That critique is exactly why the holdout states kept fighting — but it also describes the outcome plenty of antitrust practitioners consider most probable once appeals and stays are factored in.

Likelihood:High. Cost: Moderate (low-to-mid billions in asset value, minimal ongoing revenue hit)