Since merging in 2010, the combined companies have been operating under a consent decree, promising not to leverage Live Nation's touring content in a way that would punish venues for not signing up for Ticketmaster's services. A Department of Justice intervention, in which the assistant U.S. attorney for antitrust goes to a federal judge with evidence "of monopolistic and predatory abuses," Blumenthal said, would be the most obvious path toward an intervention forcing Live Nation to divest Ticketmaster. There's recent precedent for this, too.