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US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

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Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#141

Post by CyberDildonics »

vikingerik wrote: post #91
julianeon wrote: post #16

If Live Nation-Ticketmaster is not a monopoly then there is no such thing as a monopoly.

The monopoly is really the artists, who then delegate to the venues. Like, Bruce Springsteen ticket prices are high because only he is Bruce Springsteen and nobody else is. The real monopoly is on being Bruce Springsteen . Prices are high because of supply and demand for that artist ; Bruce Springsteen can only put on so many shows for so many seats and there is far more demand than that, no matter who is selling the…

I can't believe that when a company owns the venues and the tickets, mandates buying tickets from themselves then adds a huge markup to every ticket someone would actually blame the entertainers for having name recognition.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#142

Post by School-Cotton »

Loughla wrote: post #94
its_ethan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered what government funding would look like if taxpayers could allocate their tax dollars at their own discretion. I don't think it would be all that functional in practice, but the idea of it seems interesting.

That would be an absolute shit show. But it would genuinely be interesting to see what people value. Right before the inevitable collapse.

Healthcare is already a huge fraction of the government budget. The lack of free universal healthcare in the U.S. isn’t due to cost.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#143

Post by willcipriano »

wumeow wrote: post #136
llamaimperative wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynicism helps people feel smart, when in many cases it actually just reveals their immense ignorance (such as this case).

This is actually supported by evidence: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167218783195

So is my theory for what its worth: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba

The US as a democracy isn't supported by evidence.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#144

Post by roughly »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #68
roughly wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been noted by a few folks that anything the administration says out loud immediately becomes gristle for the Fox News-o-verse and therefore something for Congress to yell loudly at and try to block. The Biden administration has consequently become very good at being very quiet about the things it’s doing well, with the distinct drawback in an election year that everyone seems to be quite surprised when they disc…

The Biden administration is a textbook example of how to not control any narratives whatsoever and never be able to get any credit. They lost the narrative after Kabul and then just never got it back, despite being one of the most legislatively successful and executively impactful administrations in the last 50 years. Case in point - recent poll that had 50% of voters that listed "climate" as their top priority didn'…

Yes. It's _incredibly_ frustrating. I was not a Biden supporter, but he's gotten some absolutely incredible things accomplished - the IRA alone is so far outside what I thought would've been possible. The word from the actual people actually doing climate work is that, as far as they're concerned, the IRA solves the financing problem and the rest is implementation now, but the average voter apparently has no idea what's been done in that space. Antitrust is another area where the administration is reshaping how the economy works - they're getting a bit more credit here, but it's still widely underappreciated.

I think there was strategic value in keeping things close to the vest, and I'm not sure how much is in their hands and how much is how the media's reporting on all of this, but you're right, their inability to do messaging is going to lead the most economically progressive administration in half a century to be a one-term affair because their own voters haven't updated their priors.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#145

Post by dathery »

mjevans wrote: post #120

It would be nice to have competition among sellers within a given venue. Even give the venue the option to sell single seats (rather than large blocks at some bulk rate). For security reasons the ticket format should probably be the venue's choice, the bulk/block rate would probably include a specific time window for the bulk buyer to have their bonded agent print off the tickets on the venue's hardware.

I'm very interested to see what that kind of competition would do to ticket prices. I've often seen Ticketmaster painted as the "designated fall-guy" for consumers to hate instead of the venues and acts which are (according to this argument) the source of a lot of the junk fees. This is also the position that Ticketmaster claims as a defense [1], so it's hard to know what to believe in the absence of competition.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/ticketmaster-taylor-s...

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#146

Post by nickff »

dpkirchner wrote: post #133
nickff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTC leadership has made a number of strange (and in my opinion poor) decisions, beginning with insulting and alienating the agency staff, which had experience that the political appointees lacked. They then proceeded to act without regard to previous agency experience. At this point, it seems like they’re just trying to get their political goals back on track, though it seems a bit late, given that administration…

> insulting and alienating the agency staff What are you referring to here?

https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j...

There is a great deal of documentation and discussion, but this document covers some of it, here are a couple of on-topic quotes:

>"Documents from and testimony by FTC managers show that Chair Khan marginalized the litigators and investigators at the FTC who had the skills necessary to win cases."

>"One manager consulted with his team and reported to the Chief of Staff that Chair Khan was “[s]capegoating the career staff for the FTC’s ‘underenforcement’ of the antitrust laws”26 and “contributing to an external narrative that denigrates staff.”"

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#148

Post by ceejayoz »

autoexec wrote: post #104
fragmede wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who buy into the idea of government being a societal good, and aren't bitter old cynics.

I suppose someone could submit a foia request and get a list of the people who donated and how much. I suspect that either nobody is donating to them, or that lots of interesting people/companies are regularly donating large amounts to them.

It’s not broken out per donation, but https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/gift-contributions-... has the monthly totals.
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