alt Hacker News> Livenation’s profit margins are not very impressive for a business that supposedly has pricing power.
Being skeptical of reported profit is a prerequisite for any conversation about entertainment industry accounting.
> Are you suggesting Livenation’s leaders (Rapino, etc) are stealing from the other shareholders?
Of course I am. These guys are basically mobsters.
> Page 31 of Livenation’s 2025 10-K shows $25B revenue, $19B direct operating expenses, and $4B selling, general, and admin expenses. I wonder how much of the expenses is not going to performers and the expenses of operating venues.
Lots. There is on-the-record testimony and hard evidence in the docket. They inflated prices and faked costs. They shuffled money between entities.
There's tons and tons of reporting, testimony and an official record of the federal courts of the United States of America, all covering these issues. You don't have to read that stuff, but if you haven't got any actual understanding of this issue, there's no reason to post about it.
This organization has been a willful, blatant lawbreaker for decades and a leech on an entire industry. I've seen it first hand. But again, you don't have to believe me. It's proven in a court.
They quite literally bribed their way out of this federal case but they somehow managed to get blindsided by the state AG's sticking around. It's only this miscalculation that's caused them to suffer any consequences at all for basically the first time in history.
> Being skeptical of reported profit is a prerequisite for any conversation about entertainment industry accounting.
If you are referring to Hollywood accounting, that has nothing to do with audited figured in SEC filings. Hollywood accounting is just poorly written contracts litigated in civil court.
Misstated financials in SEC filings are a criminal offense, which obviously could be happening, but I have yet to see any evidence.
> There's tons and tons of reporting, testimony and an official record of the federal courts of the United States of America, all covering these issues. You don't have to read that stuff, but if you haven't got any actual understanding of this issue, there's no reason to post about it.
So you are alleging the federal courts and prosecutors know about all of this fraud, provably, and are not indicting anyone. Which, of course, could be true due to corruption. I just haven’t seen a reputable article connecting all the dots, which is odd because it seems like the type of thing journalists like to publish.
Also, seems like the other Livenation shareholders would not like to be defrauded, so wouldn’t they be at least suing Livenation for their missing profits?
30% of livenation is owned by another publicly listed company, with majority voting shares held by this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Malone
He seems influential enough to not want to take missing profits on the chin. Or is he in on the fraud too?
You see where this starts needing a decent amount of evidence without sounding like a conspiracy theory.