A former executive at Live Nation, the world's largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging he was wrongfully fired after raising concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges that he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of business development and practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new role, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” about the company's business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes, in short, was promised one job and forced to take another. And then fired for insisting on doing that menial job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
He is asking for $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes' lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misrepresent and exaggerate financial figures in an effort to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a broad spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures throughout the company,” the lawsuit states.
Rumanes says he received materials and documents showing the company inflated projected revenues on multiple headquarters development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes maintains that the company violated a federal law requiring independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized and opaque structure” that allows it to “avoid oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the company from threatening venues with the use of Ticketmaster. In 2019, the Justice Department determined that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement and extended the decree.
Rumanes maintains that he brought his concerns to the company's management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
