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Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

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Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#191

Post by failuser »

rokkitmensch wrote: post #52
lesuorac wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's good to be calling non-government charges a tax. Fee or Commission works fine here. The line item for sellers/buyers agent isn't "tax" when you buy/sell a house despite it being a percentage.

Let's go the other way! Any of these corporate entities that control am entire vertical were produced by the centralizing logic of the US economy and legal landscape. Boeing is but the USG's plane manufacturing division, masquerading as a public company. Live Nation is the defacto ticketing provider. As government (created, controlled) entities, it's entirely reasonable to me to call this a tax.

Boeing is not the only airplane manufacturer in US. If you look how it operates, it runs the government’s civil aviation, not the other way around. FAA has basically trusted Boeing to self-certify everything. It looks like without government interventions the only outcome is total monopolization.

It’s really funny that anti-governmental slogans of the ideological fights of the Cold War during which US Government was way more powerful than it was not got into the brains of so many people. As someone who grew up in USSR that’s really funny to observe.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#192

Post by zer00eyz »

I used to work in this space.

If the DOJ breaks up live nation the only group who gets screwed is the consumer. The sort of artist who is big enough to use live nation also wants a pay day for going on tour. They want the door, they want to sell their merch, they want a cut of the 20$ beer you buy. There might be 1 or 2 artist left who dont want to see you gouged on the ticket but that might not even be true any more.

Liven nation goes away. The venues are going to remain as a single company, the concessions are going to cost just as much. Ticketing might be phone/app only.

Every concert will turn into an auction. Want to get in front of the line. Pay 100 bucks to join a fan club. Want to cut that line, pay a 1000' bucks for a meet and greet and decent seats. Other wise wait, and bid. And that bidding is going to be ugly...

Fans are an interesting group of people. They tend to think with their heart and not with their head.... Dont believe me, we were selling hats and shirts at concerts long before video games. If you're willing to pay 5 bucks for a virtual good then 50 for a tshrit doesn't seem bad.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#193

Post by lotsofpulp »

Clent wrote: post #141
ryandrake wrote: post #124

I'm as glad as anyone else to see an abusive company get some scrutiny, B U T . . . Everyone is complaining about Ticketmaster but they're still giving them their money, so how are they supposed to respond? They are not being financially incentivized to change their ways. This feels a lot like the video gamer who hates Video Game Company XYZ with the passion of a thousand suns, yet like clockwork buys their video gam…

When did seeing a live event become a luxury? Live events have been the norm throughout history. The fact that it can now be classified as a luxury speaks to the need for drastic change.

> When did seeing a live event become a luxury?

It did not. Lots of live events happening all the time everywhere for very cheap, even free. Look around local bars and clubs.

Probably not going to find top performers for cheap though.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#194

Post by crabmusket »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12

Related: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/explosive-new-documents-u... ("BIG by Matt Stoller: Explosive New Documents Unearthed On Live Nation/Ticketmaster")

After having read the history of Standard Oil, any time I see the word "rebate" I now think something shady is definitely going on.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#195

Post by ponector »

teeray wrote: post #7

The fees alone are one thing. But the fees that are a percentage of the purchase price are quite another. That transforms them from fees into a tax.

Then tips are taxes as well?

Fee is a fee, no matter it is fixed sum of percentage. Same with taxes - they are not always a percentage.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#196

Post by thesagan »

They may be a monopoly, but fans are willing to pay to see LiveNation concerts. Acts and venues go with it. I’ve found there so many other options out there for entertainment lately that I haven’t gone to a concert in 20 years! In a way I kind of like what Ticketmaster is doing, I wish I could get a cut.

(Seriously though, we have so many olig/monopolies I’ve lost count. Sad.)

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#197

Post by shkkmo »

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #127
ayakang31415 wrote: post #110

Japan has fantastic ticketing system that has reasonable ticket price that is fixed, and no scalpers can buy all the tickets because it is a lottery system.

So rationing? I wouldn't call that fantastic. Why should someone who's barely interested but willing to go for $10 more deserving of a seat than a super fan willing to save up to shell out $150 for a seat?

Lotteries aren't rationing, but are similarly useful when supply growth is constrained and are both considered more fair ways of distribution that letting the price spike limit access to only the rich.

The problem with this approach is how the price fixing that can be involved blocks the signal needed to tell the market to modify supply. When supply is meant to be fixed, this isn't an issue.

In this particular case, the Japanese law wasn't clearly explained or referenced. My best guess for the reference is the law Japan passed before the Olympics to ban the resale of many tickets at more than their list price. This isn't price fixing so much as an anti-speculation measure. This does also have the effect of making a lottery needed for many tickets as the secondary market can't balance supply and demand.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#198

Post by carlosjobim »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #112
btown wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An artist might want to opt out of this, though. They might think, and reasonably so, that the optics of having affordable tickets - even if they make less overall - is better for their brand identity and long—term benefit. That LiveNation has created a de facto system where they cannot opt out of their price setting is at the heart of the entire matter.

Affordable tickets requires a way to combat scalping, which in turn butts up against freedom to resell/transfer tickets after purchase. It's a hard game to win whenever scarcity and economics are involved.

Combatting scalping is the easiest thing ever. Just put the name of the attendee on each ticket and if you want to be nice you can have a buyback period until a certain date before the show, where the venue purchases back your ticket if you can't go.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#199

Post by doctorpangloss »

nektro wrote: post #133
ryandrake wrote: post #124

I'm as glad as anyone else to see an abusive company get some scrutiny, B U T . . . Everyone is complaining about Ticketmaster but they're still giving them their money, so how are they supposed to respond? They are not being financially incentivized to change their ways. This feels a lot like the video gamer who hates Video Game Company XYZ with the passion of a thousand suns, yet like clockwork buys their video gam…

totally agree. I think one other angle to potentially consider is that, like many other things in the industry, this has an outsized impact on smaller artists. singers make most of their money through touring so fans might be more inclined to wade through live nation's scheming in order to support artists with a smaller base.

Smaller artists don't make any money. There is no long tail. There's no working artist. For every 1 person you are thinking of, in the 10k to 300k monthly listeners range, there are 19 who are taking money they inherited or earned somewhere else, and transferring it to "music," and sometimes that transfer winds up as surplus to their fans, and sometimes that transfer goes to Spotify and LiveNation/Ticketmaster. You could abruptly stop going to shows of smaller artists, and nothing would economically change. It's a complete fantasy. I mean, it's an attractive narrative, it has some arithmetic to it, but c'mon, this is the status quo for all non-guilded creatives: the money that they earn is so little, it doesn't really matter. It matters from the point of view of the aesthetics of being A Consumer Who Supports Small Artists, but it doesn't matter economically in any sense.

Breaking up LiveNation/Ticketmaster would wreck the biggest artists, not little ones. Really we should be asking: What has Taylor Swift done for small artists? Whom has she featured on her tracks? Ed Sheeran, Bon Iver, Brendon Urie, Haim, Maren Morris... You might not have heard of Maren Morris, but she has millions of monthly listeners on Spotify.

The problem with what the Justice Department is proposing has similar energy to many of their efforts in the creative industries: they don't know what their fucking side is. They think it's "consumers." Man, if only it were so simple.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#200

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bobthepanda wrote: post #101
calgoo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taylor swift is big enough that she could build a venue in each location if she wanted, so that not an issue. If Taylor and a few other large artists gave the middle finger to ticketmaster and basically created their own ticket system, i promise you that they would have enough pull to basically solve this. However, like you said, thats not in their or their labels interest.

stadiums are multibillion dollar affairs that take years and lots of public financing. SoFi stadium was $5.5B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_stadium...

> stadiums are multibillion dollar affairs that take years and lots of public financing

That's a 70,000-seat stadium [1][2]. Arenas (5 to 20k) can be built for a few hundred million [3].

Unfortunately, that would mean either nosebleed ticket prices or rationing tickets to fans. The former would earn the fans' ire. The latter reduce the artist's revenue.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoFi_Stadium

[2] https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/5174...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/business/concert-halls-li...

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