Marc Anthony Livestream Fiasco at The Center of New Legal Battle

Nearly two years after Marc Anthony was forced to cancel his highly-anticipated “Una Noche” livestream concert at the last minute, the event’s promoter is now suing the streaming platform for causing the “complete and total failure.”

In a lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles court, attorneys for Loud and Live Entertainment claimed that Maestro had assured the promoter that the platform’s technology could “automatically scale to accommodate the number of ticketholders” – more than 100,000 people worldwide.

But when the night of the April 17, 2021, concert came, Loud and Live says those same fans “stared at blank or frozen computer screens” as Maestro experienced what it later described as a “complete collapse of the streaming platform.”

“As a result of Maestro’s complete and total failure, Loud And Live — which paid Anthony a substantial guaranteed artist fee, promoted and backed the concert financially, and contracted with sponsors and vendors around the world — suffered significant economic losses, all of which were foreseeable to Maestro.”

“Una Noche” was supposed to be one of the biggest livestreamed shows of the pandemic era, headlined by Anthony — who fills soccer stadiums in Latin America — and joined by superstar Daddy Yankee as a guest performer. By showtime, more than 100,000 tickets had been sold.

As a streaming partner, Maestro was no novice. Prior to the Anthony concert, the platform had handled major shows like Billie Eilish’s October 2020 livestream and Melissa Etheridge’s successful EtheridgeTV series. But at 8 p.m. EST on April 17, as global fans logged on to watch Anthony perform, Maestro’s system failed. Despite frantic attempts to revive the stream, the concert never happened, and fans were left waiting for hours until learning the show was officially canceled.

“Una Noche” may have been the most high-profile concert livestream to fail, but it’s hardly the only one to experience problems. For instance, Justin Bieber’s 2021 New Year’s Eve livestream with T-Mobile was seriously delayed — almost missing East Coast celebrations — due to unexpected demand from more than 1.2 million T-Mobile customers.

Avoiding such debacles is more complicated than it looks. Unlike physical shows, which have seat selection and could sell out, livestreams offer little incentive to buy a ticket early or arrive ahead of time. This can lead to a surge in activity at the start of the event — the size of which is difficult, if not impossible, to predict and prepare for.

But in its new lawsuit, Loud and Live says those were concerns were well-known to Maestro — and that the company had promised to have the technology and the experience to deal with them.

“Although Maestro had represented to Plaintiff … that it had handled events much larger than Anthony’s, and expressly warrantied that its platform would ‘automatically scale’ to meet Loud And Live’s needs (whether it had 500 viewers or millions), Maestro failed to stream even one minute of the show,” the company’s lawyers wrote. “Maestro’s misrepresentations regarding its technological capabilities induced Loud and Live to engage and rely on Maestro.”

In legal terms, Loud and Live says that Maestro’s failures breached the contract the two companies signed. It also says the streamer violated the promises that the streaming platform had made about the capabilities of its technology — meaning it breached its “express warranty” and made a “negligent misrepresentation” to Loud and Live.

Read the entire complaint here: