What happened: the arbitration fight over ticket fees
In January 2022, Skot Heckman, Luis Ponce, Jeanene Popp, and Jacob Roberts filed a putative class action against Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. and its subsidiary Ticketmaster LLC in the Central District of California, alleging violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Their claim: Live Nation's ticketing practices allowed it to charge supracompetitive fees on primary ticket purchases across hundreds of millions of transactions.
Live Nation moved to compel arbitration, pointing to Ticketmaster's terms of use and a prior ruling in a similar case, Oberstein v. Live Nation, that had been sent to arbitration. But there was a wrinkle: facing a high volume of pending claims, Live Nation had switched its designated arbitration provider from JAMS to New Era ADR — a newer company whose rules included a specific "mass arbitration" protocol built around confidential bellwether proceedings.
Under that protocol, a small number of test cases would be arbitrated first, and the outcomes would then bind every other claimant — including claimants who never participated in, were never notified of, and had no ability to appeal those bellwether results. The district court, and later the Ninth Circuit, found that structure went well beyond what a fair arbitration process requires.
| Plaintiffs / class representatives | Skot Heckman, Luis Ponce, Jeanene Popp, Jacob Roberts |
| Defendants | Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. & Ticketmaster LLC |
| Legal basis | Sherman Act §§ 1 & 2 (federal antitrust) |
| Original filing | January 2022, C.D. Cal., No. 2:22-cv-00047 (Hon. George H. Wu) |
| Disputed arbitration provider | New Era ADR — mass arbitration / bellwether rules |
| Ninth Circuit ruling | Oct. 28, 2024 — 120 F.4th 670 — arbitration clause unconscionable, unenforceable |
| Supreme Court | Certiorari denied Oct. 6, 2025 — Ninth Circuit ruling stands |
| Class certified | Dec. 12, 2025 — nationwide, ticket purchases since 2010 |
| Opt-out deadline | July 6, 2026 |
| Trial date | July 2027 (subject to change) |
| Settlement status | None reached as of 2026 |
Why the Ninth Circuit killed Ticketmaster's arbitration clause
On October 28, 2024, a Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the district court's denial of Live Nation's motion to compel arbitration, finding New Era ADR's mass arbitration rules both procedurally and substantively unconscionable under California law. The court's criticisms were specific and pointed to design choices in the rules themselves rather than arbitration in the abstract:
The bellwether structure bound absent claimants without due process. A handful of confidential test cases could resolve the claims of every other class member, even those with no notice and no opportunity to be heard.
Appeal rights ran one way. The rules allowed an appeal to JAMS following an adverse bellwether ruling, but the court found that mechanism functioned, in practice, only as a right of appeal for Ticketmaster — not for consumers seeking injunctive relief.
Arbitrator selection favored the company. The court also faulted New Era's process for selecting arbitrators as skewed in the defendant's favor.
Critically, the panel declined to sever the unconscionable provisions and enforce the rest of the arbitration agreement — it threw out the whole clause. The court also rejected Live Nation's argument that the Federal Arbitration Act preempted California's unconscionability doctrine, holding that California law applied equally to any contract and wasn't specifically targeting arbitration.
The Supreme Court declines to intervene
On May 5, 2025, Live Nation petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari, asking the Court to decide two questions: whether the Federal Arbitration Act protects arbitration procedures specifically designed for mass arbitration, and whether the FAA preempts California's severability doctrine given its effect on arbitration agreements. On October 6, 2025, the Supreme Court denied the petition without comment, leaving the Ninth Circuit's decision — and the death of Ticketmaster's arbitration clause — in place.
The case becomes a certified class action
With arbitration foreclosed, the case proceeded in the district court on the merits. On December 12, 2025, Judge George Wu certified the case as a nationwide class action, finding the plaintiffs met the requirements to litigate on behalf of consumers who purchased primary tickets directly from Ticketmaster or a Live Nation affiliate for events at major concert venues since 2010 — spanning roughly 15 years and more than 400 million tickets. Live Nation had opposed certification, arguing that ticket sales across roughly 1,000 different venues involved too many individualized issues for a single trial, an argument the court rejected.
Class members received formal notice of the case, which is explicit that no wrongdoing has been established and no settlement exists: Live Nation and Ticketmaster deny the claims, the court has not ruled on the merits, and there is no guarantee any money will ultimately be recovered. Consumers who want to preserve the right to sue individually rather than participate in the class must opt out by July 6, 2026; doing nothing keeps them in the class by default. The case is currently on track for a jury trial in July 2027.
Heckman is the case every corporate defense team studying mass arbitration now has to reckon with, because it shows the ceiling on how one-sided a mass arbitration protocol can be before a court simply throws the whole thing out. Live Nation didn't lose because it tried to use mass arbitration — it lost because the specific rules it wrote gave itself an appeal right it denied consumers, and let a handful of confidential test cases bind thousands of people who never had a say. For plaintiffs' firms, the lesson runs the other direction from Sega and Wallrich: those cases were about proving your claimant pool is real. Heckman is about what happens when the defendant's own arbitration clause is the thing that doesn't survive scrutiny — and once it falls, the case goes to a jury, not an arbitrator.
What this means for plaintiffs' attorneys
Mass arbitration clauses can be challenged, not just used. Most of this site's coverage focuses on plaintiffs' firms deploying mass arbitration against companies. Heckman is the mirror image — a case where challenging the defendant's own mass arbitration design was the winning strategy, reopening the courthouse door instead of forcing a settlement through arbitration fee pressure.
Bellwether design is now under real scrutiny. Combined with the Ninth Circuit's 2025 ruling in Jones v. Starz upholding JAMS's consolidation authority in a different context, Heckman shows that bellwether and consolidation protocols are being evaluated provision-by-provision — some survive, some don't, and the difference is in the specific due-process protections built into the rules.
Two tracks, two theories of recovery. Watching Heckman and the DOJ case run in parallel is a useful model for how a single set of corporate practices can generate both a private damages class action and a government structural-relief action at the same time, each with its own timeline and its own definition of a win.