Astroworld Fallout Continues As Sony Music-Powered Ceremony of Roses Sues Live Nation for ‘Negligence and Willful Misconduct’

Business Nearly three years later, Live Nation is still grappling with fallout from the Astroworld tragedy, as Sony Music-powered merch and events business Ceremony of Roses is suing for negligence and more.

Ceremony of Roses, which began operating under the Sony Music banner in early 2022, just recently fired off the firmly worded complaint against Live Nation. By now, most everyone knows about the crowd crush that claimed 10 lives and injured many others at Astroworld 2021; Live Nation has settled all but one of the wrongful death suits filed by victims’ families.

Less widely known are the qualms of Ceremony of Roses, which had been tapped to set up “carnival-style games and amusements” on the Astroworld grounds, per the legal text.

And the way Ceremony of Roses describes things, under that arrangement, it “agreed to finance, set up, operate, and tear down the” attractions “for the right to recoup from revenues all of its out-of-pocket costs” – about $700,000 – and a cool “50% of all revenues thereafter.”

But when a crowd crush brought the deadly festival to a screeching halt, any potential revenue was, of course, nixed. That left the plaintiff without a means of recouping expenses or generating profit.

According to Ceremony of Roses, which previously sued Travis Scott himself and others for the same reasons, it was Live Nation’s “negligence and willful misconduct” in failing “to take numerous necessary and reasonable safety precautions” that allowed the tragedy to occur.

“Live Nation should have been more qualified and more prepared than anyone in the industry to prevent a foreseeable mass casualty event at a live music festival,” wrote Ceremony of Roses. “Yet, as explained below, Live Nation opted to cut corners and failed to take even minimal safety precautions where they were (foreseeably) needed most, resulting in a preventable mass casualty tragedy.”

Driving that point home, Ceremony of Roses emphasized that it “did not see a penny of its reasonably certain profit share” and wouldn’t “have expended $700,000 in out-of-pocket costs” had it known of Live Nation’s allegedly “false” security-related representations.

Additionally, the plaintiff wants Live Nation to cough up for the expenses it (Ceremony of Roses) incurred defending a since-settled class action suit levied by Astroworld attendees who’d been unable to spend digital currency purchased for games and rides.

On top of those litigation costs, the filing party was compelled to “expend substantial personnel resources to manually process thousands of refunds” to justifiably frustrated fans, per the suit.

All told, Ceremony of Roses is seeking damages for the Ticketmaster parent’s alleged negligence, negligent interference with contract, fraudulent misrepresentation, unfair competition, and more.