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Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

bloomberg.com

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Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#111

Post by alistairSH »

bdangubic wrote: post #89
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of annoying in practice. For example you buy four tickets to go with your friends. But you get sick so you offer your ticket to a different friend instead. Oops that’s not allowed so now no one gets to go? Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone. There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping.

> It’s kind of annoying in practice. For example you buy four tickets to go with your friends. But you get sick so you offer your ticket to a different friend instead. Oops that’s not allowed so now no one gets to go? Get a refund if you can't go > Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone. This is easy part. > There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping There of course are but they pale in c…

We don’t have to use one broken market (airline seats) as a model for another broken market (concerts).

Anyway back to the top post - a Dutch auction foods almost all these issues without weird rules.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#112

Post by andirk »

Someone tell Pearl Jam's Eddy Vedder his work to fight Ticketmaster some 30 years ago finally came to a head today.

> Ticketmaster sells about 10 times as many tickets as its closest rival, AEG.

Yeah, that's called a monopoly, even if it wasn't Ticketmaster's intention, which of course it was.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#113

Post by kube-system »

bdangubic wrote: post #87
Kirby64 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airline tickets and train tickets are because they want to identify the person, for tracking/supposed national security purposes. Also, you typically can transfer train tickets. Depends on the country. Dinner reservations: I’ve literally never had an issue “transferring” a reservation. There’s no verification, often, and the reservation tools typically let you change contact details. If I present myself as John Smith…

there are 300 people on the plane (big one) and 80k people watching taylor swift. national security is funny way to put this…

To be fair, we didn't start having the government screen people on planes when hijackers were merely endangering one plane worth of people. About 3,000 people died and likely tens of thousands of people were injured before we started doing that.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#114

Post by bombcar »

hgoel wrote: post #106
chadash wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stops a scalper from buying early and then guaranteeing someone they will transfer the ticket on the day of the event?

How is a buyer supposed to trust that the scalper won't just run away with the money? And conversely, how is the scalper supposed to trust that buyers aren't just feigning interest and will back out at the last minute? Even escrow systems don't necessarily bypass this because ultimately the buyer is likely spending on more than just the concert ticket. They're probably taking time off work, maybe traveling in from an…

We'll start a HN online marketplace, called "Dive Station" that will guarantee everything and offer insurance and double-your-money back guarantees.

We'll get bought out by TicketMaster within 5 years.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#115

Post by jfengel »

hackingonempty wrote: post #3

from the NYT: > The jury determined that Ticketmaster had overcharged consumers by $1.72 for each ticket. I'm already planning what I'm going to do with the $0.20 refund I receive for each ticket I bought.

I cannot imagine how they came up with that number. If it were under $2 per ticket it wouldn't have been worth pursuing. This happened because they were taking tens of dollars for no other reason than that there was no alternative.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#116

Post by bombcar »

hackingonempty wrote: post #42
srmatto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should also be said that they could do anything at all to prevent these professional scalpers from scooping up all the tickets at once, including even merely closing those APIs entirely but they continue to do nothing about it. The verified re-sale thing as you have correctly pointed out just allowed them to pretend like something was being done about scalping while it actually just let them make more money on the…

> It should also be said that they could do anything at all to prevent these professional scalpers from scooping up all the tickets at once Oh they did something about it. The ticket brokers can't scoop up all the tickets because many of the best ones are now only released as "Platinum" tickets at 2-5 times the price.

The only "fair" ways are to have a lottery for non-transferrable tickets, or have something akin to a dutch auction so that the band/venue captures all of the value - meaning tickets would be astronomically priced.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#117

Post by ceroxylon »

What is the moat of the major ticketing companies? Is it deals with venues? It is hard to rationalize how one company can even get a stranglehold on an entire market like this.

I feel like I could ping any random HN user and build something better in a week, which means it has been done many times already... why don't alternatives gain traction?

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#118

Post by benoau »

autoexec wrote: post #29
jp57 wrote: post #16

The horizontal control of venues is only one issue. A perhaps bigger issue is the vertical integration (if that's the right term) of first-party ticket sales and resale in one company. Ticketmaster has no real incentive to try to prevent resellers from buying up all the tickets on first sale, because it gets to charge fees on all the resales through its platform. The more times a ticket is resold, the better. I don't…

Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door. Early refunded tickets get resold online and late refunds are sold at the venue. All seats, including the best seats, go to actual fans instead of scalpers just hoping to make a profit while providing zero value. First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans.

That's too consumer friendly.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#119

Post by sporkland »

autoexec wrote: post #29
jp57 wrote: post #16

The horizontal control of venues is only one issue. A perhaps bigger issue is the vertical integration (if that's the right term) of first-party ticket sales and resale in one company. Ticketmaster has no real incentive to try to prevent resellers from buying up all the tickets on first sale, because it gets to charge fees on all the resales through its platform. The more times a ticket is resold, the better. I don't…

Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door. Early refunded tickets get resold online and late refunds are sold at the venue. All seats, including the best seats, go to actual fans instead of scalpers just hoping to make a profit while providing zero value. First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans.

We can agree scalpers are net negative.

And I like your ideas but I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay enabled by what the parent comment suggested.

I wonder if in your system it actually attracts fans or just people that have the time to wait for tickets.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#120

Post by ipaddr »

hgoel wrote: post #98
dghlsakjg wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rebuttal is: works fine on airplanes (minus abusive change fees for economy seats)

Most flights are available at high frequencies (on the order of days, weeks) compared to concerts (once a year or so). You also don't care as much about sitting together on a plane.

You care just as much on a plane. Sitting beside wife/friend => stranger
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