For years, fans have been complaining about the rising prices of tickets and fees for live music.
Some independent music venue owners and concert goers in the Tampa Bay region fear it’s just going to get worse.
In early April, Live Nation announced plans to build a 4,300-capacity music venue in the Gasworx district, a major, mixed-use development in Tampa’s Ybor City.
A week later, a federal jury in April found Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, acted as a monopoly that “harmed consumers and overcharged ticket buyers.”
Around the same time, internal Slack messages between Live Nation employees at Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre went viral. An employee mocked customers as “so stupid” and said the company is “robbing them blind, baby.”
In May, the owner of Crowbar in Ybor City went all the way to Capitol Hill to have his voice heard.
Tom DeGeorge, who’s run Crowbar for over 20 years and is a member of the National Independent Venue Association, told lawmakers what challenges that monopoly has had on independent venue owners like him across the country.
He joined Florida Matters Live & Local recently to discuss his concerns, and his decision to close the doors of Crowbar on July 31.
Ybor's changing landscape and Live Nation's impact
“I could see that Ybor was changing, and I just felt like, if we can make it to this 20-year anniversary, that's probably a good place to button things up for our venue and Ybor, with just so much change, and also not having the ability to be able to purchase the building,” DeGeorge told host Matthew Peddie.
“It's going to get more expensive, and parking gets more expensive, and rent gets more expensive, and you become more of a square peg trying to fit into a round hole instead of the center of an area that. You have to make a decision, and, as hard as it is, sometimes you have to realize that the best path forward is probably to move in a new direction and try to start over in a sense and rise again somewhere else.”
DeGeorge accused Live Nation of being insidious, slowly creeping into mainstream use, at a loss for a long time, until they were in control of a vast segment of the market — much like Amazon and other companies have done.
One of the highlights of DeGeorge’s congressional testimony, he said, was how Live Nation “can afford to lose until they win, because they got their hands in all these other parts of the pie.”
"If they have a 4,000-person room that's never existed before, they can bid on places that do 1,500 to 2,000 and scale that room a little bit down, because they can lose on that tour in order to get their hands and more things up until things jump up to the arena level,” DeGeorge said.
ALSO READ: Jury finds that Live Nation acted as a monopoly and overcharged ticket buyers
“Right now, they don't have a room of that size in our market that they own, operate, and book, so that's a great reason to keep them out, or else they're going to control the market for the ticketing prices across the board. And then you also have those smaller rooms that, mostly because they're forced to, they have to take some bookings from Live Nation in order to get those artists in. They won't need those rooms anymore if they have their own rooms.”
A federal jury rules Live Nation a monopoly
After a jury determined Live Nation to be a monopoly, the company responded on April 15 with a statement.
“The jury’s verdict is not the last word on this matter. Pending motions will determine whether the liability and damages rulings stand. ... Live Nation can and will appeal any unfavorable rulings on these motions.”
See the full statement here.
WUSF reached out to Live Nation to have them on Florida Matters’ Live & Local, and while they did not have time then, a spokesperson said they’d like to talk further at a later time.
They also told WUSF that a 300-capacity club and a 4,300-seat venue serve “entirely different audiences at different moments in an artist's career,” that they “have understood that distinction in Tampa for decades,” and they they’ve been part of the live entertainment scene in Tampa since the 1990s.
“Our new Ybor City venue reflects our continued investment in this market and its future.”
DeGeorge said Live Nation’s statement of “the jury's word is not the last word” is concerning.
“The way our country is supposed to work is that's a jury of the people that unequivocally, undeniably agreed that you are a monopoly, and you practice unfair practices," DeGeorge said.
He noted they have a right to appeal, but argues the company “could also look at and go, ‘why is this the perception of how we operate?’ and try to improve on what you do in a way that's going to support the networks around you.”
A community rallies around independent music venues
DeGeorge said he’s gotten hundreds of messages from venues around the country, from different artists, and music fans, too.
Aside from Crowbar, he said they have a lot of concerns about even more music venues being pushed out of places like Ybor City. Such as New World Tampa, which left Ybor in 2017, and the Orpheum, which relocated in 2022.
Other businesses are also reconsidering their futures in the historic district because of rising rents and parking costs, corporate-owned music venues, and efforts to recover from the lingering effects of the COVID-19 shutdown.
As of June 9, 2026, a change.org petition to reject the Gasworx Live Nation venue planned for 1419 E. 4th Ave/ and 1402 N. 15th has gotten 11,867 signatures.
Angel D’Angelo, who started the petition, writes that “this is not opposition to change. It is opposition to irresponsible development driven by a corporation that already dominates the national live music industry. Ybor has lost too many of its independent venues in recent years. New World was forced out. The Orpheum left. Czar closed. The Bricks has been sold. Crowbar, the last of the old guard, is closing. What remains is fragile. To say it survives at all is generous.”
It calls for Tampa’s leaders to “protect what remains of Ybor’s music and cultural landscape,” reject the removal of a grand oak standing in the way of construction, and “reject the idea that Ybor’s future should be handed over to a corporation that has already absorbed so much of the national live music economy.”
DeGeorge wants to see it go a step further. He says the National Independent Venue Association wants to see Live Nation disbanded.
“NIVA, our stance is, we want to see them completely broken up. I don't see how you can control the tours, you can control the ticketing, you can control the artist contracts, you can control the touring, you control the vending, and make it fair,” DeGeorge said.
Crowbar will close its doors on July 31. But the music hasn’t stopped yet. You can get tickets for the remaining shows on its website. And an upcoming documentary, "The Man Behind the Crowbar," is currently filming the venue's final moments and its history in Tampa’s music scene.
The crew is currently fundraising to help pay for production costs.
This story was compiled from interviews conducted by Matthew Peddie for "Florida Matters Live & Local." You can listen to the full interview with Tom DeGeorge here.
