21 November 2023
By: Dan Wall
Live Nation has been cooperating with the Senate subcommittee investigation for several months and has by no means been “stonewalled.” We have produced documents on every issue raised by the subcommittee, not only in its initial letter but in subsequent conversations. We actually produced almost 10,000 pages of documents, including more than 2000 emails, dozens of commercial agreements and voluminous other material. We have met with the subcommittee staff on several occasions and answered numerous questions.
We have now run into an obstacle that the subcommittee can create – and which it can remove at any time.
Some of the information requested from Live Nation is highly sensitive customer information about artists, venues and others with whom we do business. It deals with clearly confidential topics, such as how much money artists make on their tours, which in any other government investigation would be produced under binding confidentiality protections to prevent abuse. Indeed, in other investigations Live Nation has produced the same or similar information subject to confidentiality protections without objection.
We have repeatedly told the subcommittee that we would produce such information with normal confidentiality protections — nothing greater than other branches of the federal government routinely provide — but not without them. The subcommittee has refused to provide any confidentiality protections whatsoever. This has led to an impasse that left us with no procedural option but to decline to provide the confidential third party information at issue.
The subcommittee responded by issuing a subpoena, which was expected. Only in a subpoena can Live Nation assert its rights to protect the confidentiality of this information. While the subpoena is an unnecessary drain on taxpayer resources, we have been and continue to be prepared to work with the subcommittee to address any legitimate investigative need the way government agencies do every day with countless other subpoena recipients: using standard procedures to prevent abuse. of confidential information.
Our limit in this process – which the subcommittee chair has chosen to call stonewalling – is simply that we value our artist relationships and the interests of other stakeholders we work with too much to betray their trust by releasing their information without adequate protection.
