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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

#241

Post by WWLink »

the_gastropod wrote: post #179
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the objection is the timing. If the administration truly cared about such things, they'd do them in non-election years. But they seem to save up these things for election years so people feel listened to.

Yes. I think that is the objection. But it's absurd. It's not like the FTC has been sitting on its hands the past 3 years. Last year, for example, they sued Amazon for illegally maintaining a monopoly. In 2022, they sued Walmart for facilitating money-transfer fraud, Harley Davidson for illegally restricting customers' rights to repair, countless health insurers to block illegal mergers. In 2021 they sued Frontier Co…

If Fox News lies to them enough times it becomes the truth :P

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

#242

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

gruez wrote: post #237
laidoffamazon wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely think that if Biden does not win another term there are far larger problems for the American project than Ticketmaster, including democracy existing as we know it today.

>including democracy existing as we know it today. Weren't there similar predictions back in 2016? How is it different this time? Or to back up a bit, what exactly does "democracy existing as we know it today" mean? It could mean anything between "US becomes North Korea" and "the whitehouse revoked the press credentials of someone who said something mean about trump".

It wasn't wrong in 2016 either, what's your point?

That the coup failed and Congress wasn't murdered doesn't mean they didn't try.

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

#243

Post by boringg »

DoodahMan wrote: post #134

PLEASE make this happen Uncle Sam! i am a lover of music, my friends are lovers of music, the circles i run in on the internet are lovers of music. i cannot express in words how much Live Nation sucks. they are ruining concerts. not only do they have a strangle-hold on venues, but why the hell are they "allowed" to run some in-house scalping ops? i cannot wait for the day i see their demise. i will not pour out a bee…

[flagged]

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

#245

Post by geodel »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #212
ajdude wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to say that but a lot of the venues Exclusively use Ticketmaster as the official way to buy tickets for their shows. I called one, and they said to go online or pay at the door and hope There are seats left.

No one is forced to go see a concert. Somehow millions of people survive without doing it.

Agree. Somehow environmentalist have not picked on this. I imagine popular concerts would have huge carbon footprint.

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

#246

Post by lbwtaylor »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #98
vikingerik wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're really missing the point. The issue here isn't that top artists can't sell their tickets at a high price. It's that venues have exclusivity deals w/ ticketmaster/livenation and ticketmaster/livenation ultimately charge outrageous fees to consumers no matter what. Then often their own reselling arm is involved in the scalping behavior. The artists aren't reaping these fees. Ticketmaster/livenation is capturing…

>>The artists aren't reaping these fees

This is not true. The fees are just there to mask the cost of the ticket:

>>According to Ticketmaster, the fees are determined “in collaboration” with its clients, all of whom receive a cut from the charges.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/ho...

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

#247

Post by mixmastamyk »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #223
supernova87a wrote: post #181

Let's however not get too caught up in feel-goodism that somehow breaking up Ticketmaster is ridding the live entertainment industry of some external leech that everyone hated. You should realize that venues and artists are equally beneficiaries of what Ticketmaster enables. In a sense they enjoy having Ticketmaster be the hated scapegoat for high prices that they then also enjoy the benefits of. Without Ticketmaster…

A lot of artists are not happy about this. Selling seats to the highest bidder to maximize revenue of a given show is not necessarily in the long-term interests of an artist.

Indeed, been going to a lot fewer concerts now that good seats start at $400.

There’s still small independent venues with realistic prices but they are being bought up.

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

#248

Post by geodel »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #217
throwaway5959 wrote: post #147

If they don’t my wife and I are just going to stop going to shows that use TicketMaster/Live Nation. Any more a third of the ticket price is fees. Not worth it.

Why haven’t you stopped already then?

A step like this can change the course of history. So it need to be taken with lot of due diligence.

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

#249

Post by mixmastamyk »

jjeaff wrote: post #201
supernova87a wrote: post #181

Let's however not get too caught up in feel-goodism that somehow breaking up Ticketmaster is ridding the live entertainment industry of some external leech that everyone hated. You should realize that venues and artists are equally beneficiaries of what Ticketmaster enables. In a sense they enjoy having Ticketmaster be the hated scapegoat for high prices that they then also enjoy the benefits of. Without Ticketmaster…

the huge upcharge on tickets is usually from scalpers that are allowed to buy and resell on the platform. are artists and venues somehow in on the scalping? I have suspected as much, but I have no evidence.

Yes, good seats are now put to auction to capture scalper profit beforehand.

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

#250

Post by zdragnar »

fastball wrote: post #218
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merely being a monopoly is not sufficient to warrant antitrust action.

Live Nation / Ticketmaster is also an excellent example of a bad for consumers monopoly.

Pardon my ignorance here, as I don't actually attend concerts, but to play something of devil's advocate...

Isn't the secondary market for tickets- scalpers and such- significantly more expensive than what Ticketmaster is selling the tickets for? Which is to say, aren't the tickets sold below market value?

I'm not entirely clear on how there being more competition would help consumers.

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