The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, calls for pressure on Live Nation Entertainment, including strategic, targeted boycotts, until it takes meaningful steps to account for its deep complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza—especially by dropping its subsidiary Live Nation Israel that openly supports the genocidal Israeli military and artwashes apartheid.
Our Demands
We call for strategic BDS pressure on Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s biggest live events promoter, until it:
- drops Live Nation Israel,
- adopts consistent ethical programming and partnership policies across its entire network (see here and here for examples), and
- respects PACBI and BDS guidelines and positions across its entire network.
Live Nation owned, operated and associated venues and festivals
While we recognize that Live Nation’s venues, festivals and other subsidiaries cannot easily untether themselves from their parent company and have limited control when it comes to Live Nation Entertainment’s decision making, they are irrefutably implicated in its complicity. The same goes for venues and festivals that Live Nation operates, and those for which it is an exclusive or primary programmer. They are particularly well positioned to contribute to challenging this complicity, and have an undeniable ethical responsibility to do so.
Therefore, we demand that all Live Nation owned, operated and associated venues and festivals:
- publicly pressure Live Nation to drop its complicit Israeli subsidiary,
- adopt ethical programming and partnership policies and respect PACBI/BDS guidelines, regardless of their parent company’s decisions, and
- publicly condemn the complicity of Live Nation’s investors.
We call for pressure on these festivals and venues until they meet all these demands.
Artists, fans, workers and crew
To artists, we ask you to pressure Live Nation’s festivals and venues to meet the above demands. And to fans, festival-goers, and audience members, we urge you to amplify and support our campaign’s demands. We stand with workers at Live Nation’s venues and festivals, and hope you can find meaningful ways to raise our demands internally.
Click here to read FAQs on PACBI’s call to pressure Live Nation.
Artwashing Apartheid & Genocide
For over a decade, Live Nation Israel—which formed when Live Nation acquired a majority stake in Israeli company Bluestone Entertainment—has been a driving force behind a number of international artists crossing the nonviolent Palestinian civil society do-no-harm picket line to perform in apartheid Israel. These artists include Imagine Dragons, Christina Aguilera, The Backstreet Boys, Maroon 5, and Bon Jovi—typically performing at venues like Hayarkon Park and Live Park in Rishon LeZion that are built on top of the ruins of ethnically cleansed Indigenous Palestinian villages.
More recently, Live Nation’s complicit Israeli subsidiary publicly and explicitly aligned itself with the genocidal Israeli military, stating: “We stand with… IDF fighters and the security forces”—while they carried out the initial stages of Israel’s ongoing live-streamed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry and the International Association of Genocide Scholars are the latest to recognize Israel’s carnage against Palestinians in Gaza as a genocide.
Additional Complicity
Live Nation’s largest shareholder is US conglomerate Liberty Media, whose Liberty Israel Venture Fund has invested in Israel’s failing AI, cybersecurity, and telecommunications sectors—which have close ties to apartheid Israel's genocidal military and intelligence infrastructure. Another Liberty subsidiary, Liberty Technology Venture Capital, also invests in complicit Israeli tech companies.
After Liberty Media, Live Nation’s top two institutional investors are The Vanguard Group and BlackRock. Both companies are named in a recent UN report for their significant investments in corporations complicit in Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid and genocide—including Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and Caterpillar, among many others. Along with Live Nation, these investors also hold substantial, non-controlling stakes in a variety of other entertainment companies, including Netflix, The Walt Disney Company, and AMC Entertainment Holdings.
Additionally, several Live Nation board members have connections to Israel’s apartheid and genocide. A recent addition to the board, Richard Grenell, has promoted Trump’s Abraham Accords and was dubbed “a very strong supporter of Israel” by the leader of the Zionist Organization of America. He is one of the authoritarian US president’s closest advisors and confidants. Carl Vogel is an advisor to private equity firm KKR (see the FAQs for more). James S. Kahan is a director of Amdocs, a complicit Israeli telecommunications company. Another board member and chair of its compensation committee, Chad Hollingsworth, also serves as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Liberty Media Corporation.
An Intersectional Struggle
Live Nation has long faced intense criticism from artists, fans, and crew. Its merger with Ticketmaster triggered a lawsuit even from the US Department of Justice, with 40 US states accusing the corporation of illegal monopoly. More recently, the US Federal Trade Commission and several US states filed a separate lawsuit alleging illegal ticket resale tactics. Amidst this political scrutiny, Live Nation reportedly donated half a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration.
Its market monopolization has enabled Live Nation’s widespread exploitative practices. In a leaked memo, the company used the pandemic as a pretext to cut artists’ fees and to reportedly skim a 30% commission off artist merchandise. Years later, musicians and crew are still seeing stagnant or decreasing wages as Live Nation–Ticketmaster continues to profit on "dynamic" ticket pricing that rips off fans.
The company has also contributed to gutting and homogenizing local music scenes. A recent campaign led by the Maine Music Alliance (MEMA) with support from the National Independent Venues Association and United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) successfully blocked construction of a new Live Nation venue in Portland, Maine—one of the few US cities where the company doesn’t have a stranglehold. PACBI recognizes the interconnectedness of our struggles and stands in solidarity with such strategic initiatives.
The Time is Now
As Israel’s genocide on the Palestinian people in Gaza enters its third year, there has never been greater urgency or momentum to end complicity in apartheid and genocide in all spheres. At the time of writing, four European public broadcasters have boycotted Eurovision, the world’s biggest live music event, over genocidal Israel’s participation. The No Music for Genocide campaign continues to grow with major label artists like Björk, Paramore, and Lorde joining over a thousand other artists and labels blocking their music from streaming in apartheid Israel.
Strategic BDS pressure is nothing new for Live Nation. Last year, massive artist and fan boycotts forced complicit bank Barclays to end its sponsorship of Live Nation's British music festivals. Over the last decade, artists including Beyoncé and Shakira have canceled previously announced shows in apartheid Israel promoted by Bluestone/Live Nation Israel—despite the company’s PR efforts to obscure these BDS victories.
Live Nation must take meaningful accountability for the harm its years of artwashing have caused Palestinians. There can be no stage for genocide or apartheid.
Click here to read FAQs on PACBI’s call to pressure Live Nation.
Contact PACBI if you have questions, or would like to start a campaign in your context: [email protected]