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US federal prosecutors are set to seek to break up Live Nation Entertainment in a lawsuit alleging that Ticketmaster’s dominance in ticketing violates antitrust law, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Department of Justice alongside a group of states could file a case as early as Thursday, the person said. It will pursue remedies including splitting Live Nation Entertainment, which was created by the 2010 merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

The company has had a long-standing legal stand-off with the DoJ, and it has faced growing pushback from fans, lawmakers, artists and competitors who accuse it of having too much power over the live entertainment industry.

The issue has drawn more attention in the past few years as prices have soared and musicians began touring again after a pandemic-induced hiatus. The average US concert ticket price rose to nearly $131 in 2023, up 23 per cent from the prior year, according to Pollstar.

The DoJ declined to comment. Live Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company’s shares dropped more than 6 per cent in after-hours trading.

The justice department in 2010 gave the green light to the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation subject to a 10-year settlement agreement that forced Ticketmaster to license a copy of its ticketing software to rival Anschutz Entertainment Group and divest ticketing assets. The DoJ also barred it from retaliating against venues that choose alternative ticketing or promotional services.

In 2019, the DoJ modified and extended the agreement, saying the group had “repeatedly” violated the initial deal. Prosecutors added new provisions including specifying that the retaliation ban would apply to venues that host “one or more” live events, not just “all Live Nation content”. But they also added that the group could bundle products and services “in any combination”.

The lawsuit would mark the DoJ’s latest antitrust broadside against corporate America. Jonathan Kanter, head of the department’s antitrust unit, has adopted a tougher enforcement stance in a bid to tackle anti-competitive conduct he argues has proliferated in recent decades due to lax policy.

On an earnings call earlier this month, Live Nation Entertainment’s chief financial officer Joe Berchtold said the DoJ’s investigation “appears to be focused on specific business practices, not the legality of Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger or our overall business structure”. 

“Based on the issues we know about, we don’t believe a break-up of Live Nation and Ticketmaster would be a legally permissible remedy”, Berchtold added.

Frustration against Ticketmaster was exacerbated by its fiasco in 2022 during the sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, when buyers were left waiting for hours as its website was overwhelmed by massive demand. Ticketmaster cancelled a subsequent ticket sale due to “insufficient remaining ticket inventory”.

Lawmakers across parties railed against Ticketmaster after the Swift debacle, calling Live Nation Entertainment to testify before Congress shortly thereafter alongside artists and competitors.

Bloomberg first reported news of the lawsuit.

Four customers in Florida have filed a federal lawsuit against The Hershey Company alleging that designs displayed on some Reese’s Peanut Butter cups were misleading to customers.

Plaintiffs v. The Hershey Company

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Plaintiffs v. The Hershey Company

Four customers in Florida have filed a federal lawsuit against The Hershey Company alleging that designs displayed on some Reese’s Peanut Butter cups were misleading to customers.

Plaintiffs v. The Hershey Company

Several individuals in Florida have filed a federal lawsuit against The Hershey Company alleging that designs displayed on some Reese’s Peanut Butter cups were misleading to customers.

In a 20-page lawsuit obtained by NPR, four consumers — Nathan Vidal, Debra Kennick, Abdjul Martin and Eduardo Granados — argue that the chocolate manufacturer misled its customers with several of its Reese’s Peanut Butter products by showing “explicit carved out artistic designs” on the wrappers.

Once the chocolate candies are unwrapped from their packaging, the actual products and the products are “blanks,” the lawsuit says.

“Hershey’s deceptive advertising is causing many consumers to purchase the products because of the cool and beautiful carved out designs on the products’ packaging, when they would have not purchased the products if they were truthfully advertised,” the suit reads.

The chocolate candies listed by the consumers in the lawsuit include — Reese’s Medal, Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkin, Reese’s White Ghost, Reese’s Peanut Butter Bats and Reese’s Peanut Butter FootBalls.

In the suit, the four customers allege that the products’ packaging was not “always deceptive and misleading,” as the company changed the packaging for the products to include detailed carvings within the last two to three years in order to “boost sales and revenues.”

The four consumers are asking for an unspecified amount in compensatory damages in an amount according to proof at trial, the lawsuit says.

The Hershey Company has not responded to NPR’s multiple requests for comment.

Anthony Russo, the attorney representing the case, told NPR his firm receives dozens of calls a month for cases involving misleading advertising when it comes to products and advertising.

“I’d say about 98-99% of [the cases] we have to turn down just because we don’t feel like the particular fact pattern is strong enough to pursue a case,” Russo said.

Russo didn’t specify why his firm took this case but he said they’re also representing another set of plaintiffs in a class action suit against Burger King. The plaintiffs argue that the fast food chain uses misleading advertising to present its food items as larger than they are.

The Hershey Company is no stranger to lawsuits involving false representation in its products.

In January, a Florida woman filed a lawsuit against the company after alleging she purchased Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins with a jack-o’-lantern wrapping in October. The woman, Cynthia Kelly, said the picture on the wrapper did not match the chocolate candy she unwrapped.

Kelly’s lawsuit argues that the problematic packaging extends to Reese’s seasonal ghosts, bats and pumpkins — citing several YouTube videos of other customers complaining.

“This is a class action against Hershey for falsely representing several Reese’s Peanut Butter products as containing explicit carved out artistic designs when there are no such carvings in the actual products,” the lawsuit says.

Kelly is seeking at least $5 million in damages. It is unclear whether her case will make it in front of a judge.

NPR’s Megan Lim contributed reporting.

When Rishi Sunak told his cabinet, after weeks of agonising, that he would hold a surprise July 4 general election, he immediately won the effusive support of his housing minister, Michael Gove.

“Who dares wins,” Gove said on Wednesday afternoon, quoting the SAS regiment’s motto. “You dared — and you will win.”

Gove would have received odds of 25-1 at Ladbrokes if he was prepared to back his assertion about a Sunak election victory with hard cash; the prime minister has embarked on a six-week campaign with his Conservatives trailing the opposition Labour party by more than 20 percentage points in opinion polls.

Not every minister backed his decision to call a snap election: Esther McVey said he should have waited longer to let the fruits of economic recovery feed through to voters. Ominously, McVey is the “minister for common sense”.

But Sunak received an enthusiastic show of ministerial support — loud banging on the cabinet table — as he prepared to venture out into the Downing Street rain to announce the July 4 election to the nation shortly after 5pm.

“We’d been checking the weather forecast for days,” said one Number 10 staffer, after the prime minister was drenched giving his statement. “But Rishi was only ever going to announce the election in the street. It was very British.”

Sunak’s decision to hold a summer election sparked an angry backlash from some despairing Tory MPs bemused by his move to go to the country when the party is so far behind in the polls.

One former minister branded the decision “insane”, while another Conservative MP said they felt “resigned” to losing their seat.

Lashing out at Sunak and his ability to jet off to California if he is defeated at the election, one arch Tory critic fearful of losing their seat said bitterly and with some exaggeration: “I don’t own a ranch in California.” (Sunak owns an apartment in Santa Monica.)

Other Conservatives insisted they did support Sunak’s decision. The mood among cabinet ministers was “up for it”, said one, who described the reaction to Sunak’s move as “a mixture of surprise and excitement”.

His allies said he had been increasingly minded to call a summer election over the past six weeks, with the decision crystallising in his mind over the past fortnight.

Crucially Sunak consulted chancellor Jeremy Hunt and they agreed that waiting until the autumn would bring little additional economic cheer, not least because the public finances could not withstand further tax cuts.

There were fierce debates inside Sunak’s inner circle about the timing of polling day; campaign chief Isaac Levido had long favoured the autumn, while chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith was thought to back an early election.

“In the end, they all agreed that it was Rishi’s decision and they would back whatever he wanted to do,” said an ally of the prime minister. “It was finely balanced, but this showed strength and courage — that’s what the public want from their politicians.”

Some backbench Tory MPs agreed. One said the decision showed “boldness”, while another said they were prepared to take the argument to voters. Positive sentiments were also aired on Conservative WhatsApp groups.

Speaking at a rally held at the ExCel Centre in London on Wednesday evening, Sunak told supporters that the past few years had been tough but he had delivered on his first priority. “To drive back inflation to normal.”

Ministers lined up around Sunak — who was still wearing rain soaked trousers — as he said that the “penny had dropped” around Europe that the government’s Rwanda asylum scheme was the way to tackle illegal immigration.

“We Conservatives have got a clear plan with bold action to secure a better future,” he said.

What Tory MPs admitted they could agree on was that the snap election had caught them by surprise. Sunak’s decision was so tightly held that even his closest cabinet allies were kept in the dark until the eleventh hour.

It was only at the unusually timed cabinet meeting on Wednesday afternoon that Sunak revealed his plan — less than an hour before he announced it to the country.

While ministers are normally permitted to miss the weekly cabinet meeting to attend to other pressing business, on this occasion Number 10 issued the instruction that all must be present.

That forced Lord David Cameron, the foreign secretary, to cut short a visit to Tirana where he had travelled to discuss immigration with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, was meanwhile forced to delay a planned visit to the Baltics.

These moves and others — including chancellor Hunt’s decision to pull out of a television interview — fuelled speculation at Westminster on Wednesday morning that Sunak was about to call a summer election.

MPs, advisers and journalists frantically appealed to each other — both in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster and on WhatsApp — for concrete details about what Sunak planned, as the rumours reached fever pitch.

Just after midday, Sunak was challenged at prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons about the speculation by Stephen Flynn, the Scottish National party leader at Westminster. Sunak failed to rule out a snap poll, and his press secretary also declined to stamp out the possibility.

By early afternoon, most MPs believed a general election was likely. “It looks like it’s on,” said one Labour MP, who claimed the party was ready.

A despondent Tory MP said they believed that any Conservative colleagues with a majority below 15,000 were at risk.

The first clue that Sunak was considering cutting and running emerged last week, when Conservative bosses convened to discuss money and fundraising for a potential July poll.

Senior Tory figures were instructed to reach out discreetly to megadonors to see if large-scale donations could be elicited at short notice.

The crunch talks were first reported by the Financial Times, though Conservative officials dismissed the significance of the conversations at the time.

Shortly after cabinet ministers traipsed into Downing Street at about 4pm, senior Conservative figures confirmed the prime minister would announce the general election would take place on July 4.

Storm clouds hovered over Number 10 as journalists crammed into the press area waiting for Sunak to make his statement. The prime minister will hope the climate for the Conservatives improves in the next six weeks.