Symphony Scuffle: Lawsuit Claims Philadelphia Orchestra Is Trying to Crush Its Smaller Rival

A legal cacophony is brewing in the City of Brotherly Love.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the Philly Pops accused the Philadelphia Orchestra of violating federal antitrust laws by abusing its control over local concert venues and ticketing services to try to crush its smaller rival.

“Defendants have engaged … in unlawful, anticompetitive and predatory conduct with respect to the Philly POPS for the purpose and with the intent to force the Philly POPS out of business so that Philadelphia Orchestra could eliminate the Philly Pops as a competitor in and monopolize the market for live symphonic popular concert music concerts in the Greater Philadelphia Metropolitan Area,” lawyers for the Pops wrote.

Philly Pops claims that it has long peacefully co-existed with the Orchestra, one of America’s so-called Big Five symphony orchestras. The Pops has played symphonic versions of Broadway show tunes, movie scores and popular music, while the Orchestra has stuck to classical symphonic – and the two have been “marketed to different potential patrons” and “attended by audiences with little duplication.”

But starting last year, Philly Pops says the Orchestra has been jumping into the pops space and trying to put its smaller rival out of business. The lawsuit claims that the Orchestra has done so mostly by abusing its merger with the Kimmel Center, the primary orchestra venue in the city and the ticketing service Ticket Philadelphia.

According to the lawsuit, the Orchestra “substantially and unreasonably” increased fees for the Pops to perform at the Kimmel Center and slowed down the sale of tickets to previously scheduled shows. It then hired a PR firm to “create media messaging” that the Pops would be absorbed by the Orchestra after the 2023 season.

When the Pops said it would not go along with such a plan, the Orchestra “summarily evicted the POPS from the Kimmel Center forcing the POPS to cancel and postpone its concerts [there] and scramble for different but substantially less viable indoor venues.”

In addition to naming the Philadelphia Orchestra-Kimmel Center, Inc. as a defendant, the lawsuit also named Matias Tarnopolsky, the company’s president and CEO.

In a statement to Billboard, a spokesperson for the Orchestra said: “We have just received the lawsuit, which was brought to our attention by the media. As the complaint has yet to be formally served, we will reserve comment until then and once it has been reviewed with counsel.”

Read the entire lawsuit against the Philadelphia Orchestra here: