Michael G. Rowles has been Live Nation‘s top lawyer for 20 years. He is now stepping back into a reduced role that runs to the end of 2029.
Taking over as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary on November 2 is Da-Wai Hu, currently General Counsel and Secretary of pet retailer Chewy.
Both moves were disclosed in an 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday (September 25).
“On September 25, 2026, the Company announced that it would be hiring Da-Wai Hu to serve as the Company’s Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary beginning November 2, 2026,” the filing states.
The filing gives no reason for the change, and makes no reference to the antitrust litigation the company has been fighting since May 2024.
Live Nation set out the Rowles arrangement under Item 5.02, which covers officer departures, appointments, and compensation. Hu‘s appointment it filed under Item 8.01 – other events – rather than under Item 5.02(c), the sub-item reserved for the appointment of a principal officer.
Rowles is not leaving.
On the same day, he and the company signed a First Amendment to his employment agreement, effective November 1, 2026, extending his term from December 31, 2027, to December 31, 2029.
It sets out a handover running more than a year.
“Effective November 1, 2026, the Employee will report to a to be named General Counsel (‘Reporting Officer’) and have modified responsibilities to be defined by the Reporting Officer during the period from November 1, 2026, through December 31, 2027,” the amendment states.
“Effective January 1, 2028, and through the end of the Term, the Employee’s title will be Senior Legal Advisor and provide senior legal advisory duties to Live Nation and the Reporting Officer as those duties shall be reasonably defined by the Reporting Officer during the Term.”
The amendment puts numbers on what “reduced” means. From January 1, 2028, Rowles‘ base salary drops to USD $500,000, down from the USD $1.1 million set in his 2023 contract, and his contractual bonus is deleted outright.
It also rewrites what happens if the arrangement ends early: terminated without cause, or leaving for good reason, after December 31, 2027, he takes a lump sum equal to his salary for whatever remains of the term.
The document further records that he has moved his primary residence to South Carolina, and rewrites the contract’s governing law and venue clause accordingly: California becomes South Carolina, and Los Angeles becomes whichever city he now lives in. The arbitration clause, untouched, still puts any hearing in Los Angeles.
That keeps Rowles inside the building through the next phase of a legal fight he has been running since before it existed.
Live Nation signed him as Executive Vice President and General Counsel on March 13, 2006, announcing the appointment the following day, according to a Form 8-K filed at the time.
That was almost four years before the Ticketmaster merger closed in 2010, the transaction the US Department of Justice would later go to court to unwind.
A consent decree followed in 2010, amended and extended in 2020 after the DOJ investigated retaliation complaints, each version imposing rules on Live Nation‘s conduct rather than separating it from Ticketmaster.
That didn’t settle it either, and in May 2024 the DOJ sued, joined by attorneys general from dozens of states and the District of Columbia, seeking to break the two companies apart.
That case reached trial in Manhattan on March 2 this year, and split into two tracks a week later when the DOJ settled.
The deal let Live Nation keep Ticketmaster in exchange for divesting its exclusive booking agreements with 13 amphitheaters, capping Ticketmaster‘s service fees at 15% of face value at Live Nation amphitheaters, setting aside USD $280 million for state damages and civil penalty claims, and extending its consent decree by eight years.
Six states signed on, for shares of that fund totaling roughly USD $18.6 million, according to Live Nation‘s quarterly filings.
The rest refused and pressed on, and on April 15 a jury found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally monopolized primary ticketing at major US concert venues, and that Live Nation held monopoly power in large amphitheaters and unlawfully required artists who played the ones it owns to buy its promotion services too. The jury sided with 33 states and the District of Columbia on every claim put to it.
Both tracks are still live.
The companies have asked the court to throw out the verdict or grant a new trial, while the states have filed a remedy proposal seeking a divestiture of Ticketmaster and the sale of a number of Live Nation-owned amphitheaters.
Responding to that proposal in May, Live Nation EVP of Corporate & Regulatory Affairs Dan Wall said in a statement to Billboard: “The jury verdict in this case cannot support a request for divesting Ticketmaster from Live Nation. The states’ request for a breakup is performative and political.”
The DOJ settlement, meanwhile, remains subject to review under the Tunney Act, under which Judge Arun Subramanian must decide whether it serves the public interest.
Comments filed before that window closed on September 4 included submissions from AEG and SeatGeek, both urging rejection.
“Put simply, the Proposed Decree does not break Ticketmaster’s grip; it tightens it,” AEG‘s filing states.
Running alongside all of it is a separate federal action: in September 2025, the Federal Trade Commission and seven states sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster under the BOTS Act and the FTC Act, alleging the company hides mandatory fees until checkout and profits from brokers who breach its own ticket limits.
Live Nation moved to have that case thrown out, arguing the BOTS Act was written for resellers rather than the platforms hosting them.
On Monday (September 28), US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles denied that motion, according to Billboard, which first reported the order.
“The BOTS Act does not preclude platforms from facing liability, and the court will not read it as doing so,” the judge wrote.
That case now proceeds.
All of it lands on Hu five weeks from now.
He clerked on the Eighth and Second Circuits, then practiced mergers and acquisitions at Sullivan & Cromwell and Paul, Weiss, according to Chewy‘s investor disclosures.
He spent a decade at Amazon, rising to Vice President and Associate General Counsel and leading teams that supported its international and cross-border consumer businesses, then ran the legal function at payments company Checkout.com before joining Chewy in December 2023.
Rowles, meanwhile, does not take a new title until January 1, 2028, when he becomes Senior Legal Advisor: his amendment leaves him nominally Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary until then, the same title the 8-K hands Hu on November 2. What changes on November 1 is the reporting line. The amendment puts Rowles under “a to be named General Counsel,” with responsibilities that officer defines – and keeps him on the payroll for most of what comes next.Music Business Worldwide
