The federal jury verdict finding that music industry giant Live Nation and its Ticketmaster platform operated as an illegal monopoly was a “major thrill” for Zach Biesanz ’08.
Next up for Biesanz: taking on Amazon in another highly anticipated antitrust trial that could lead to a new era of innovation and competition in online shopping for consumers and merchants.
As senior enforcement counsel for Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison ’90, Biesanz relishes such high-stakes cases. He joined Ellison’s antitrust division in 2022 after more than nine years as an antitrust enforcer in the New York State Attorney General’s office.
Antitrust statutes prohibit monopolies, anticompetitive mergers, and collusive practices like bid rigging to support healthy business competition and fair markets. Antitrust attorneys can reach agreements with violators or sue them to stop such activities. In some cases, attorneys general may pursue compensation for consumers and the state.
“The theory goes, and I think there’s a decent amount of empirical support for it, that when you have robust competition, you get lower prices, higher output, better innovation, higher wages, more investment into research and development, higher quality, more choices, better customer service, and better distribution,” Biesanz says.
Exhausting Trial, Exhilarating Win
In the Live Nation-Ticketmaster case, the jury found that Ellison and a coalition of 33 other state attorneys general had proven that the company’s anticompetitive practices had increased costs for fans, artists, and venues across the country. The company’s unlawful monopoly eliminated competition from other ticket providers, venue owners, and concert promoters, jurors found.
“That was a major thrill,” Biesanz says of the April verdict. “It was a busy time, for sure. I’m still tired.”
Biesanz was in New York for the bulk of the six-week trial in Manhattan federal court. “I was preparing for witness testimony, taking witness testimony, helping other people prepare, and doing behind-the-scenes work,” he says.
Minnesota and most of the other plaintiff states continued the case when, a week into the trial, the Justice Department settled with Live Nation and Ticketmaster. An upcoming proceeding on damages and other remedies, including the possible breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, could bring sweeping changes to the live entertainment business.
“We all went into the case believing that it was important, that we had the evidence to prove it up, and that trying it to a verdict was going to be consequential,” Biesanz says. “Not only to this case but also to have that experience, to get that result, was going to build leverage for future cases and investigations too.”
Looming Amazon Showdown
That know-how may prove valuable next year when Biesanz is on the trial team in the case against Amazon. Ellison joined a bipartisan group of 19 state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission in alleging that Amazon has monopolized both the online superstore market for consumers and the market for online services used by sellers.
Amazon’s unlawful practices, the lawsuit alleges, eliminate competition and make shopping and selling on Amazon more expensive for everyone. The company’s alleged anticompetitive practices include anti-discounting measures that punish sellers and discourage other online retailers from offering lower prices. To gain Prime eligibility for their products, sellers allegedly must use Amazon’s costly fulfillment services, a requirement that increases their expenses and limits competition from other platforms.
“If you’re selling stuff out of your garage and you need a place to sell it online, Amazon is very important,” Biesanz says. “And why that matters is that Amazon has become very expensive as a place to sell as a third-party merchant. But it’s protected its ability to be very expensive by engaging in conduct that prevents discounting by or on other online retailers.”
Doing ‘The most Aggregate Good’
Biesanz became interested in antitrust law and law school while pursuing a minor in economics as an undergraduate.
State and federal antitrust laws “leverage the collective power of the government against abuses by powerful companies,” Biesanz says. “These cases feel like a way to do the most aggregate good.”
Through the Law School’s dual-degree program, Biesanz earned his law degree and a master’s degree in applied economics in four years of coursework. He spent two years in the Consumer Protection Clinic, working with Professor Prentiss Cox ’90. “I credit half of what I learned in law school to him,” Biesanz says.
After law school, Biesanz joined a plaintiff-side class-action firm and then worked in consumer protection for New York City.
At the New York State Attorney General’s office, he worked on a “product-hopping” case against Actavis, which sought to switch patients from a twice-daily version of its Alzheimer’s drug to a new, once-daily version. With patent exclusivity on its twice-daily version set to expire, the company hoped to avoid the “patent cliff,” when profits drop as generic versions of a drug become available.
New York won a preliminary injunction for nationwide relief and then prevailed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
“The entire pharmaceutical industry was watching to see if they could get away with the same stunt,” Biesanz says. “That case has saved people untold billions of dollars that would have been spent on name-brand pharmaceuticals if we had lost or nobody had challenged it.”
In Minnesota, Biesanz is increasingly focusing on criminal antitrust enforcement, where penalties include possible prison time in addition to fines. He hosts monthly meetings of a multistate working group of enforcers that he launched, and last year he conducted a criminal antitrust “boot camp” in Chicago for state enforcers around the country.
In October, he brought the first criminal antitrust case in Minnesota in perhaps 30 years, charging a turbine-repair contractor with attempted bid rigging.
“If you might have to spend time serving a custodial sentence, it doesn’t matter how much money you can make violating antitrust laws,” Biesanz says. “That’s a very strong deterrent.”