The UK pop star Ellie Goulding has filed a lawsuit against her two former managers, Ben Mawson and Ed Millet of TaP Management, claiming that they didn't disclose that their management company was owned by the giant touring company Live Nation, first partly and then fully. Goulding's lawyers claim that the managers' Live Nation ties prevented them from properly representing her and that they pushed her into deals with Live Nation whenever possible.
Variety reports that Goulding's lawyers have filed a lawsuit against Manson and Millet, though not against Live Nation. Mawson and Millet represented Goulding from 2018 to 2025, taking a 20% commission of her earnings in that time. When she signed with them, TaP's parent company HNOE was partly owned by Live Nation, which acquired a 50.1% stake on the company in 2015. In 2019, Live Nation fully acquired HNOE, and Mawson became CEO of HNOE.
In her lawsuit, Ellie Goulding says that Mawson and Millet had a clear conflict of interest, representing her while acting as employees for Live Nation. She says she didn't know that her managers were "restrained" from doing anything that might "terminate or otherwise reduce or diminish [their management clients’] business relationship in any respect with the Company [Live Nation] or any of its affiliates." Goulding says that both of them reported directly to a Live Nation executive, which prevented them from finding the best deals available for her. Instead, she claims that they "were subject to contractual obligations not to encourage any artist under their management to cease to do business with or reduce the extent of her or business with any company in the Live Nation group."
In the time that she was represented by Mawson and Millet, Ellie Goulding made deals with Live Nation for touring, merchandise, and a documentary. She's seeking unspecified "equitable compensation and/or damages for their breaches of fiduciary duty," as well as other entitlements. Last year, Goulding returned to her former manager Sarah Stennett and to WME for worldwide representation. She'll release a new album called I Know Too Much next month.
Dua Lipa also left TaP Management in 2022, hiring her father as her manager instead. She didn't give any explicit reason for the split, but she later told The Guardian, "It was definitely about taking control back. I really wanted to be more in the know about everything happening with me." Right now, TaP's roster only includes one major star, and it's Lana Del Rey.
Earlier this year, a federal jury found that Live Nation's ownership of Ticketmaster constitutes a harmful monopoly in a lawsuit filed by a number of state attorneys general. If what Goulding's legal claim is true, it would certainly appear to be another side of Live Nation engaging in illegal and unethical business practices.
