Around 350 workers lost their jobs at Ticketmaster on Wednesday in a restructuring that swept through engineering, product, and design teams spanning 25 countries — a reduction representing 8% of the company's total global headcount. Contractors were also let go as part of the effort.
"The purpose of [these cuts] is stronger prioritization, especially in engineering product and design," Ticketmaster Global President Saumil Mehta told Pollstar. "That comes with flattening layers, consolidating ownership, changing how teams are structured and ensuring that we put more energy behind specific initiatives."
When the timing of the cuts was raised with Mehta, he framed the decision as a forward-looking bet on where Ticketmaster needs to be — not an assessment of where it has been. "To me the strong performance reflects the past and this is about what are we doing to set ourselves up for the earnings report 12 months from now, 18 months from now, 24 months from now," he told Pollstar. The company's executive leadership team has not changed.
The announcement followed by one day the release of Live Nation's first-quarter earnings, which showed the parent company's total revenue reaching $3.8 billion, a 12% increase over the same period last year. Within those results, Ticketmaster posted $765 million in revenue, up 10%, and the number of fee-bearing tickets processed through late April hit 138 million, a 9% gain.
Prior to his arrival at Ticketmaster, Mehta held senior leadership roles at Square $SQ, overseeing product and business functions across a portfolio that included Cash App, Afterpay, and TIDAL. Speaking at a keynote on April 15, Mehta cast AI as something akin to a foundational infrastructure — a "new utility," in his words — that would underpin a reimagined approach to how fans discover and purchase tickets. Slides from the session showed a revamped purchasing flow that would make inventory availability, seat views, and pricing more transparent, with additional work targeting the mobile experience and how fans search for events.
The layoffs come as Live Nation navigates significant legal pressure. A federal jury found in April that Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally monopolized the U.S. ticketing and amphitheater markets, delivering a victory to a coalition of 33 states and Washington, D.C. that pursued the case after the Justice Department settled mid-trial. The states are seeking damages of up to $700 million, and some have called for Live Nation to sell Ticketmaster. Live Nation said it plans to appeal.
Separately, Live Nation agreed to pay $9.9 million to resolve a Washington, D.C. investigation into deceptive ticket pricing that found the company had advertised artificially low prices and disclosed mandatory fees only at checkout for at least a decade. A $450 million charge recorded in the first quarter to account for the federal settlement and continuing litigation with state attorneys general pushed Live Nation into an operating loss of $371 million for the period.