My career in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent. Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects. Industry professionals, whether famous stars or behind the scenes staff have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stories. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information on how they evolved into their chosen career. We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes, and hear from people who help them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind the scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville. Joining us today is Tommy D., New Jersey's fearless concert promoter and founder of Juice Entertainment. In his waged a 15-year war against Live Nation, what started as a dream to launch the East Coast's biggest EDM festival at the Meadowlands turned into a brutal takedown. Artists forced to pull out, venues threatened, and a smear campaign that nearly left him homeless. Refusing to break, Tommy fired back with an antitrust lawsuit exposing Live Nation's mafia-like tactics, secret rebates, inflated costs, and choke holes that limit artists to perform at different venues. This is truly a David vs. Goliath scenario. As Tommy D.'s case barrels towards a jury trial, it's more than a promoter's revenge plot. It's a clarion call for fairness in an industry where fans pay premium prices, artists get squeezed, and independents like him fight to survive. He has a tremendous story, so before we dive into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate you having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. If you would, give us a little information on what you're doing. What I'm currently doing right now is I've been in a 15-year battle with Live Nation, a New Jersey federal court. They wiped me out of my career in the entertainment industry 15 years ago, so now I sell cable door-to-door to provide for my kids and continue that fight against Live Nation and pay for the costs to continue to do so. So what happened? I mean, we all hear stories about the music industry and all the shady parts of the business in the past. Give us a little information on what it was you were doing before you became entangled with Live Nation. Yeah, I started in nightclub business pretty young age, lived on my own at 16 years old through crazy house parties to survive and pay my rent. I moved on there to nightclubs, but I wanted to build a club empire. And with a lot of hard work and my team's hard work, over many years, I built myself up to one of the pioneers of EDM music. It was called House Music back in the day. It wasn't a cool out of New Jersey and New York. Over time, ran almost every major nightclub through New York, New Jersey, Miami. Won a lot of awards. It's the number one sound system in the world. Booked pretty much every major celebrity artist out there. Had tons of success. I got to a point where I couldn't get any bigger as a promoter. The next step up was into the festival business. So I saw EDM back in the day in 2010 again, it wasn't mainstream yet. So I saw that it was going to break mainstream. So I signed an exclusive deal with the State Fair and Meadowlands. It's the largest fair in the East Coast. It's at the home of the Jetson Giants, MetLife Stadium, anybody that's not familiar with a 10 year deal to produce all concerts, festivals. And I was on the brink of putting on the largest EDM festival in the East Coast. And then a company live nation found out about it, wiped me out. And that's where that 15 year battle began. What were some of the acts that you were working with at that time? At the EDM festival or back in the day? Well, let's just give the audience a little bit of both that you've worked with. Absolutely. So over time, I did everything from Snoop Dogg, the Kardashians, Kid Cudi, Tiesto, number one DJ in the world at the time, Chris Brown, Pink, go on and keep going for long list, you name it. That's a great list. Now, what happened? You said that you had this contract. What led up to Live Nation creating this issue for you that you couldn't get past? Yeah, absolutely. So I didn't even know who Live Nation was for 15 years in the business in the house music that I was involved in. Live Nation wasn't involved in it. So I got a call from the owner of the state from Meadowlands. Right at this time, we had our talent in place, we had our staging in place, contract in place, everything set up. It was a turnkey operation. And I got a call from him, Al Dorso, great guy. And he told me that Live Nation just came in and met with him, Block and Tiesto. That was the number one DJ in the world that I was bringing aboard. Blocking all our talent from the William Morris Agency. That was their exclusive agency. Badmouthing us to the New Jersey Sports Authority. That's his landlord, the owner of the Meadowlands to get us kicked out and that they were going to block our tickets from Ticketmaster. Okay. What happened next after that? He was super nervous. He was the nicest guy in the world. He was screaming and yelling at me. I don't blame him after I found out what happened. So he asked us to go meet Live Nation because they were threatened to block the whole festival. They said to him, if there was an event of 10,000 people, they had to be involved. And if they weren't involved, my festival was over. So I went into the Live Nation headquarters, met with their president, Jason Miller, and their vice president of talent, John De Esposito. How did that go for you? In that meeting, they came in, attacked like wild animals. Said, we're going to get you kicked out. There's loopholes in your contract. We're going to knock that out of the festival. William Morrissey, our exclusive talent agency. We're blocking all the artists, dates, like the DJs and artists you're booking worldwide if they perform for you. So they're not going to perform for you. We're going to go to the Sports Authority that we own the Meadowlands. That's our turf. We're going to get you kicked out from them. I tried to defend us, defend my partner's reputation. It's like, yes, though, at the time, my one partner, John De Matteo, it was like back in the day. Like, wanted Mike Tyson, you'd call Don King. If you see us, though, you're called De Matteo. I tried to, you know, I stuck out for my partners. They then said, if I kicked my two partners out, John De Matteo and Vito Bruno, kicked them out of the contract, they would come into the contract. Fun, the whole thing. Give me 50% of the festival. I only had a handshake deal at the time with John De Matteo and Vito Bruno, but I've always honored my word. My dad taught me that as a kid. I told them I'm not kicking these guys out of a contract because you tell me to do so. And they then said they would block tickets from Ticketmaster. I said, how are you going to block tickets from Ticketmaster? I've done tickets with Ticketmaster all the time. They said we own them. I thought they were lying until after I left their headquarters and I Googled Live Nation, bought Ticketmaster and they had just bought them. Then I realized I was in a lot of trouble. Did you talk it over with your partners? What did they have to say? What did they think? My partners were super fearful of it. One of the partners had actually booked TSTOW, did business with Live Nation, and he said like they have a lot of power. Obviously, they're huge, the 800 pound gorilla. And he said they're not in EDM though. You know, they said they've only done an event with me. They're not in this business, but everybody was very fearful after their involvement. They even met with the Live Nation executives and Live Nation told them that they weren't part of the show. They were just going to push a button and cancel it in two seconds. That's what ended up happening. Okay, that's tough. Now, this is just me speaking out loud. Why didn't you take the deal, give the perception you kicked out your partners, then have a side deal where you still pay them, and it turns out a win-win for everyone. Live Nation gets what they want, and at least you're making some money on shows that you had. Well, I grew up in New Jersey and I came from nothing. I built myself to the top. And in New Jersey, I had the mafia threaten me many times. I had mafia literally put guns in my mouth, threaten, you know, take me out if I didn't pay them. I didn't pay them and they let me do business. So I wasn't going to let this bully sit there and tell me, kick your partners out and have to cut some shady side deal with these guys because this billion-dollar company wants a festival when there's nothing to do with EDM. They were behind the game. Me and my partners were the pioneers of the industry. Yeah, okay. I certainly understand that and I totally get it. But the worst-case scenario did happen and you totally lost your shows. But if you'd made the deal, kept your shows, you all would be making money even though not the same amount that you probably were used to doing. I totally respect how you handled this. So what led you down that path when other people might have gone for the deal to make the money? Well, Tony, just going back to my upbringing, my dad passed away at a young age, but my dad always told me you had a handshake deal. You never break it. Yeah, I get that. That was the way I was raised with my dad as well. As I got older in life, he was in construction. I ran into people that saw him, you know, ran into me and they were like, I had like a $50,000 deal with your dad to pave the driveway and no contract, nothing. And you know what? He just shook my hand and I always got my money. So at the time I never thought of that. I just thought at the point I'm not going to kick my partners out. These people that are coming in there threatening, attacking, screaming like maniacs and wild animals to block all my talent and block all my ticketing. Why do I want to partner with them? I want to partner with them in the first place from that. Why would I want to partner with these people? Yeah, everything you say makes perfect sense. So what happened next? After that, the town agencies, we were at, as you know, from the industry, how it works, we were booking flights. We were right at that stage. It all went dark. We had millions of dollars. It doesn't seem like much these days, but back then in the EDM world, there was a lot of money. It all went dark. No phone calls were answered. The festival, we couldn't secure talent and our contract was terminated by Aldo or so because we were unable to perform the contract. After that, I lost my career. I allege and I will prove a trial. I get a trial day soon. I was nominated at the time as the number one promoter by the New Jersey Star Ledger by the fans. Live Nation had my name removed after they wiped me out of the festival from the being the number one promoter from the word. My reputation then was destroyed in the industry. Agents wouldn't pick up my call anymore. Club owners wouldn't talk and then I was blacklisted and out of the industry. Okay. So that's a whirlwind of things to happen when all the dust settled. They seem like they've won that battle. You decided not to give up. What was your next step to take this to the next level? Yeah, I ended up going homeless from this for about a month. Then after I've decided I'll transpire, then I decided to get an attorney and take them to court. My goal at the time probably be a naive was I have tape recordings of their top executives confessing to everything I'm saying right now. Everything I said have the receipts. So I assumed that Live Nation with the tape recordings would apologize, give me some money to get back to my festival going and give me my festival back. They promoted the people that did it to VP of talent, to president of talent and the guy that they called Crazy and the same John Diaz Pizito. They produced a huge documentary promoting how crazy and the same it was on the bamboozle festival. So it was not how I anticipated it. I mean, we anticipated a trial if anything within one year. It's been 15 years now. Wow. That's unbelievable. What has been happening over the last 15 years? What's been going on? Well, when the case first started off, Live Nation was ordered by a federal judge, Judge Manion, to turn over discovery within 30 days. Live Nation defied that court order for over, I believe, three to four years. My lawyers kept going back to the court asking finally the lawyer, the name was David at the time said we know we're like wearing out of our welcome, the plaintiffs, but we're entitled to this discovery. Live Nation's only turned over 5% of discovery to this day, which doesn't surprise me because recently in recent times the Senate has opinion of them and for information, I don't think they ever turned that over. So we finally ran out of money to be able to fighting over the discovery. So we had to continue the case after that with only 5% of the discovery. Unfortunately, that's what these big companies do. They rely on their big pockets to wear down the opposition, hoping that you'll either give in or settle. The fact that you've lasted 15 years is a testament to you seeing this all the way through to the end. Do you have the same lawyer or has anything changed there? Yeah, I have a new lawyer for a long period of time, Andrew Smith, really good attorney, but it's only one attorney versus 2,000 attorneys of Live Nation from Greenberg, Troy and 2,000 power legals. So, you know, it's a tough fight. I've continued the fight and I'm continuing the fight now for the scene for the fans, for the independent promoters. And it's been a long time, though, it's 15 years. 15 years is a very long time. Do you have a trial date set yet? What's happening? I'd affirm trial date of March was a 2024 and then Live Nation wanted another mediation for the 15th time. So, respectfully, the court did so and I respect the court. Now it's I'm set up for November 18th for oral arguments where Live Nation is trying to eliminate. I have 500 trial exhibits, 20 of witnesses, Live Nation has zero exhibits and zero witnesses. They're trying to eliminate 497 of those 500 documents. It was October the hearing, it got moved, so it's November 18th, New Jersey federal court. Is that this year? Yes, this year, coming up. With all this happening, what does your lawyer say? I mean, he's entrenched in this just as much as you are now. Has he given you any thoughts? What is his outlook for the future of this case? My lawyer, seeing information, seeing my case, knows my case is really good, knows I have a ton of evidence in my case supporting me. He respects that I want to take the case to trial. He respects that I don't want to be acquired or hired or just take a payout like everybody else. And he respects that I want to take this to a jury and that I want the evidence to be exposed to the public. There's a lot of evidence I have that was uncovered by an expert report that was suppressed by the late Congressman Bill Pascrell out of New Jersey that he sent to the DOJ in the United States Senate, which I allege Live Nation runs a fraudulent, basically a racket of a business with two sets of bucks. He understands that I'm fighting this now for a greater cause, for fans' high ticket prices, that I believe with my information exposed that overnight the ticket prices would lower in the United States 30 to 40%. He respects my cause, that I'm fighting this for independent promoters, artists, and really for fans. I was an early victim of the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger, but there's victims every day. And the fans are the biggest victim that sit on a queue line every day and also on the tickets, $850 for a nosebleed seat. He respects my cause and he's going with me all the way with it, and I really appreciate that. With all the years, with all the people you've talked with, with all the artists you've talked with, have you got any support from people within the business that say, hey, I want to help you beat them? No, I have people that come up to me all the time on the side, tell me, I really appreciate what you're doing. I really respect what you're doing. Like, you're awesome. Like, you've taught this for 15 years, nobody would do this. And they're like, I'd love to come out and publicly support you, but I can't. And I said, I totally understand because if you're an artist and you come out and support me, you're not going to have a show. If you're an independent promoter, then you don't work for them already. You're going to end up exactly where I am selling cable. And I don't want to, you know, that's just what it is. So I don't blame the artists for not coming out and saying it publicly. I know Kid Rock recently just came out, but he has some politics that help him, I believe. You know, I don't blame the artists and I don't blame the independent promoters for not speaking out publicly for me. A few have, but most won't. And behind the scenes, they're all supporting for me and rooting for me. And I tell them, I understand, I don't want you to come speak out for me because I don't want you to have no money, you know, and no shows. What about others that have had issues with them? It seems that if everyone got together, there could be a class action lawsuit against them and it would be a bigger situation than just one person against a big giant like them. Yeah, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know on that side with class action stuff. I just know my lip, my resources were limited. I didn't have the money of a live nation, obviously. Yeah, right, right. So I didn't join with any, nobody's joined it, joined in my suit. So it's basically you against the world? Yeah, it's me against live nation, which is as powerful as the world, I guess you can say these days. Yeah, pretty much when you're against a huge company like that. Now, are you okay with everything you're saying here? Hopefully, what you're doing is putting more information out there. But the last thing I want is this to hurt you in any way with the suit that you've got going. Well, everything I'm saying, I'm saying of public information. Okay. So it's either on Pacer put out by a congressman that report, which alleges that live nation runs an illegal business in the billions of dollars, put out by a congressman when at live nations attorneys accidentally uploaded it on Pacer. So everything I'm saying is the truth and everything that I'm saying has been public. I have all the receipts to back that up, but anything else private, I'm not sharing that out in the public domain. That's for trial. Right, right. That makes great sense. What are the expectations that you have for the first court appearance that you have coming up very, very soon? I know the courts are very busy. I respect that and I respect the courts, but I'm hoping to get a trial date. I didn't speak to the press just so you know, until like in the last year, I was quiet, not a peep out of me. My fear is my witnesses are getting old. You know, the club industry, you know how it works and not vegetarians and, you know, a lot of people party a lot, you know. They were some of them were old at the time. You're 15 years later. So I decided to come out and speak publicly because my fear of my witnesses get older, you know, unable to testify. Then live nation, they're delay delay pressure confused. It wins. And that's the only way I lose a trial. Otherwise, I guarantee I won the trial at 100%. I would think that you could get their testimony in writing almost like a dying declaration in case the worst case was to happen. At least that way you're covered. This way the evidence is there for people to see. Yeah, absolutely. Even like someone asked me that question before, it's really good one. Depositions you can use, but trial strategy from my attorneys where you don't want to ask everybody every single question or they're in front of a jury. You want to ask the very minimal. Then you get in front of a jury. You want to ask them a real question because you know what they said people tell the truth when they're sitting in front of a juror. So that's been the strategy of my legal team and I'll leave that in their hands, but I respect it. Sure. Absolutely. Now you're hoping to get a trial date very soon. What is your lawyer telling you now? What is he thinking? I mean, you've got your wishes and then you've got your reality. What's the reality of what he's telling you and what he's hoping will happen? He says my case is overwhelming in strength and trial date. We know the courts are busy and we respect it, but nobody can tell on a trial date. It's been 15 years, so it's hard to say. Yeah, 15 years is a long time. You think they would want to get this off the dockets now just because of the length of time it's been sitting there. The one thing they can say about you is you have been consistent and stuck with the whole program. Yeah, I've looked it up. I know verse Live Nation, I'm the longest lawsuit against Live Nation in the United States. Not being on appeal because I'm not on appeal. I can't even find on a Google search a case older than mine in the United States that's not on appeal. I'm not saying it's not out there. Again, we respect the courts. I blame Live Nation, not the court. Live Nation's gone just delay, delay, confuse, you know, continuance. I've been discovery. They turned 5% over. We gave everything. We gave emails with my business partners like talking to their moms. We gave everything over, nothing to hide. And got a massive amount of trial exhibits and really wanted to just bring in front of a jury and want to have it out there for the public to see. And so it can really help the fans and I believe it's going to really help lower the ticket prices. My evidence from my case. Yeah, you stuck with it probably longer than anyone would even think about doing it. Now, for the listeners that are listening to this, where can they find more information about what you're doing, what you've been through so they can get a better idea of what you've actually been through over the last 15 years in fighting this. Yeah, they can go up my website, TommyDJewsEntertainment.com. They can go on there, TommyDJewsEntertainment.com. And I just asked for their support. If you want lower ticket prices, you want a fair scene where independent promoters can thrive. I ask for their support and artists can pick where they want to perform, not just one monopoly that push there is right now. Do you have links on your site where they can go to find out more information? And a lot of things that you're saying, I know are true, but they need to see it in other areas so that way they can follow you. Yeah, there's some links on there. It goes to my TikTok, other ones on there, but that's a great point, Tony. I'll actually update it a little bit more on a little bit more of the background history of myself. I'll update it a little bit more. Yeah, I think that it is very important for them to hear and see what you've been through. This music business has a lot of things in it over the past 50 years or so that have not been good. It's been taking a lot of research for people to figure this out. So I think that this is a great thing for you to put out there so they can follow you. Not only can they follow you, but they can also follow any links that you might have on there that will give them the information that they need to know too. Yeah, I have links on there where Conger of Pascua found my expert report that was suppressed by Live Nation and accidentally uploaded to the court where he sent it to the DOJ and the Senate. Those links are all on my website. There's a lot of articles that were written about my case on there. Links are on my website and they can also Google my name out. There's a pretty decent amount of information. Yeah, that's great. I think the more information that people have, the better it is for everyone. Now, what do you think is important? What is important for the listeners to take away from everything that you've been through, everything that you're going through right now? What's important for them to gain for knowledge so that they will follow this all the way to the end right along with you? I think the most important thing that they can take away from this is I'm sticking up and I've fought this for 15 years. In the beginning, it was an economic dispute. I did it to get my money and get my festival back. Over time, now I've thought I had a moral obligation after the information that I believe I'm one of the only people that have Live Nation's fax out of books that I allege is a racket. I've decided that I'm going to fight this and continue this and I'm continuing it because of the fans, the artists, independent promoters, I believe the scene that Live Nation's killed and the ever-increasing ticket prices. Live Nation inflation. It's artificially encreated. And the evidence that I have off their cookbooks, I know is the reason I believe what I allege and I'll prove it at trial, is the reason so. I'm fighting it for now for fans to be able to get lower ticket prices. Look, their CEO just went out on national TV and said, let's raise ticket prices. How many of your listeners are real happy or in a stadium if he jumps out of MetLife Stadium now? Michael Rapinoe says, let's raise ticket prices. I don't think the fans are going to be really happy about that. So I'm fighting this for the fans now and I'm fighting this for other independent promoters. I'm fighting IF kids, 11-year-old who wants to run concerts. I'm telling them go to college. I didn't go to college, but you can't run the scene that I did. He's like, yeah, you're chilling with Snoop Dogg with those pictures over there. I said, yeah, I went from chilling with Snoop Dogg drinking champagne to being homeless within a year. I said, so you know what? You can't do that. You're not able to do that in this industry unless something happens with your dad's case or the Department of Justice. So I'm fighting this for other people's kids too, not just my own. And I'm really fighting this for the fans and for the industry that I love and music that I love and fair industry again. So artists can pick which promoter they want to play for. Instead of like, you know, how nice would it be if there's 10 different promoters and you can pick who has better production, who has better costs, who has better safety security, you know, after world tragedy, but they can't do so. And I don't blame the artist. You have one choice. You want a worldwide stadium tour, you got to be with LabNation and Ticketmaster. There's no one else. For the scene that I love and that great in me, who I became, I'm fighting it for that as well. Yeah, I think that's awesome. Now you say you have a lot of people backing you. Have you had the opposite? Have you had people going, hey, what the hell are you doing? You're out there making noise. You're disrupting everything. You're putting yourself in danger. Have you had that happen to you? Well, I've definitely had people telling me, hey, you're putting yourself in danger doing this with the $36 billion company. That's for sure. Just even family members. I've had people from the, that deal with the secondary market. Now actually some of them are rallying around my side after they realize what I stand for and learned a little bit more about my case. Because I believe the secondary market needs to be fixed as well. But I feel like the way I mentioned, I break it down to them and now they respect my cause. I'm like, look, to me, it's like a bank robbery. And the one I allege is Robin the Bank is live nation. The guy that's holding the van door open, that's the scalper. He should be prosecuted and he should go to jail. So I am a support of changes in the secondary market that need to be made. Some of those ones had stood up against me. Now a lot of them are actually understanding what I stand for and that I don't support scalpers because I don't like scalpers. They're now actually starting to rally behind me. Well, that's good. It's always nice to have people within the industry supporting you on what you're trying to do, because ultimately, if you win, then everyone else will win right along with you. Needless to say, I'm definitely wishing you all the best and hoping that this can get over for you very soon. So I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today and tell us your story. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for having me on and it's a pleasure and congratulations on how well your show is doing. Always been my pleasure. Thanks again. Contact media at PlateauMusic.com.
