Live Nation (NYSE: LYV), the world’s largest live entertainment company, has outperformed the stock market long-term with a powerful, integrated business model.
A slew of government lawsuits against its Ticketmaster ticket sales division have poured some rain on the company’s parade recently. But it’s unclear how much that will matter, as tickets accounted for only 12% of Live Nation’s revenue in the first nine months of 2025.
In addition to Ticketmaster, the company has a concerts division, which accounts for 83% of revenue, and a sponsorship and advertising segment, which accounts for 5%. Live Nation owns and/or operates about 400 global venues. The size ranges from small clubs to arenas holding 20,000-30,000 people. It doesn’t own large outdoor stadiums.
Live Nation’s various businesses serve virtually all elements of live events. Its concerts unit includes promotions and venues. Artists’ agents hire promoters for their events, and the promoters find a venue. So Live Nation can often feed the concerts it promotes to its own venues. Morningstar analyst Matthew Dolgin points out.
As a promoter, Live Nation helps artists to manage their tours. In addition to finding venues that means marketing the events, handling ticket sales through Ticketmaster, and taking care of a show’s logistics.
Venue ownership provides advantages
Live Nation’s ownership of venues provides multiple revenue opportunities. That includes rental income for hosting events, concessions, and parking. In June, Live Nation announced that it will build or renovate 18 venues in 18 cities over the next 18 months. Dolgin is particularly enthusiastic about its opportunities overseas.
The concert division has a low profit margin – a 5.6% adjusted operating margin in the first nine months of 2025. But that number is misleading, Dolgin says.
“Live Nation can operate concerts at such thin margins because concerts allow it to earn profits elsewhere,” he said. “Sponsorship revenue operates at extremely high margins and makes up one-third of total company profit. And it’s a direct byproduct of the concerts business.”
About two-thirds of Live Nation’s sponsorship and advertising revenue is associated with shows Live Nation promotes and the venues where they take place. This source of profit would be non-existent without the concerts business, Dolgin notes. The sponsorship and advertising division had a 68% adjusted operating income margin in the first nine months of 2025.
Then there’s Ticketmaster. It benefits from a built-in feed of venues that Live Nation owns and the shows it promotes. The success builds on itself, and Ticketmaster’s innovation has kept it ahead of the competition, Dolgin said.
Gaudy numbers for Ticketmaster
It’s more than the ticket agency for Live Nation shows. Ticketmaster had about 10,000 clients in 2024 and sold 638 million tickets, with much of that coming from sports events. “Ticketmaster is the clear ticketing industry leader,” Dolgin said, and was the fastest-growing U.S. mobile app in 2022, according to Comscore.
The unit is under siege from lawsuits by the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission and U.S. states for alleged monopolistic practices and antitrust violations.
But it’s not clear how committed the Trump administration is to these legal actions, some of which began before it took office. It’s also not clear the government would win the cases. And even if it did, the impact on Live Nation is uncertain.
In any case, that government’s latest suit, announced in September, helped knock Live Nation’s stock down 28% from Sept. 11 to Nov. 24.
However, it has rebounded 16% since then, and history is on its side. The stock has returned an annualized 19.5% over the past 10 years, compared to 14.8% for the S&P 500. So the future may be bright for Live Nation, but the government suits remain a wild card.
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