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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

#241

Post by Reason077 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #192

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…

> "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."

This is true, of course, but the rest of your claims are pretty speculative. Big bands were touring long before the TicketMaster monopoly became a thing.

A competitive marketplace benefits both suppliers (ie: the bands) as well as consumers. Why wouldn't a band want to play several ticketing companies off against each other to see who can offer them the best deal? It's also not in a band's best interest to rip off their own fans: they want to keep tickets cheap enough to make sure that the stadiums get filled.

In Europe there is a much more competitive market in the ticketing/events space, where LiveNation/Ticketmaster competes against multiple big players like Eventim, AXS, See Tickets, as well as innumerable secondary and resale-market ticketing companies like Viagogo/Stubhub, DICE, Ticketswap, etc. And there's certainly no shortage of big bands on tour.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#242

Post by zer00eyz »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #233
zer00eyz wrote: post #192

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…

This exists today... you can buy several tiers of tickets on Ticketmaster and the ability to even access those tickets depends on other status. Today we see Ticketmaster adding numerous fees and using anti-competitive venue and artist lock-in to avoid the industry having competition. I have been to over 100 concerts in the last 2 years and I can't say I have noticed any additional value or ease by using my tickets th…

Ticket master sucks, but it's gonna be worse.

Doing onsales is pretty hard, your basically making every one stand in line all be it virtual.

No one wants to deal with that. The current all in price is just going to become the "minimum bid" put down more money and possibly get better seats. When ever one has bids in, then close them and run an algorithm to distribute seats and start charging cards. The tech is cheaper, you cut out scalpers for the most part and every one makes more money.

Ticketing can get worse and it probably will.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#243

Post by tzs »

michael_michael wrote: post #106
methodical wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I'd love to stick it to them, I haven't looked into it at all, assuming I'd have to pay more for legal counsel than the tickets were worth.

Legal counsel isn't allowed in small claims courts. It's just a question of whether it's worth your time. edit: Ha! Here is a guide on how to sue Ticketmaster: https://fairshake.com/ticketmaster/how-to-sue/

> Legal counsel isn't allowed in small claims courts.

That's only true in a handful of states. Most allow you to bring a lawyer.

Small claims courts will generally have simpler and friendlier procedures so that even if a lawyer is allowed you will be fine without one in most cases.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#244

Post by bombcar »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #204
selectodude wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the economist would say that Taylor Swift should have made every penny of the $300 ticket cost. Live Nation getting even a penny is the market failure, not the cost of the ticket itself.

Why would the economist say that? If Taylor swift made every penny, then what reason would the business that operates the venue have to operate?

Some people would like to see all the ticket money go to Taylor, and then she pays for the venue, credit card fees, and such herself.

As it is, those get funneled off earlier in the process, and people get annoyed.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#245

Post by anonymouse008 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #238
oldandboring wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in court they will probably argue that this is vertical integration that creates savings they pass along to the consumer. DOJ will likely argue they are pocketing it.

Has the DOJ ever won an argument against just vertical integration in the entire history of the US?

This is a most beautiful question. Perhaps the baby bells? That’s about all I can think of

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#247

Post by MichaelZuo »

TheGRS wrote: post #173
voidwtf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand correctly Ticketmaster is still the one creating this problem, they demand exclusivity in their contracts which often means the venue has no choice if they want to participate in a large enough market to continue operating. Similarly artists have trouble securing large venues if not participating in their scheme. This is the problem with most 'monopolies', they reach a certain critical mass where they…

Yes, I think they have leveraged their power to keep the situation in their favor and not let a competitor come up. I don't really see a reason we couldn't have 4-5 ticketmaster type companies that still do some of the BS stuff we all hate. The whole thing where Ticketmaster will refuse other artists if your venue doesn't use them is very monopolistic.

Yeah every large venue, even if they were 100% independent, by default has a monopoly within some distance. And their management can access granular population density, income, etc…, data too, so they would all just price roughly the same modulo venue quality and expected demographic within X travel time. Regardless of where the artist chose to perform.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#248

Post by PeeMcGee »

codecutter wrote: post #125
to11mtm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to guess, it is probably in their fine print, and the ability to pay for a refund would be a further refutation in a chargeback case. That the ticket could not be sold via their system for whatever reason, is not a 'simple' act, although TBH maybe they should write to the DOJ or whatever... given some of the other stuff they've been caught doing, it would not at all surprise me to see some `if (!ticket.HadRe…

You may win the judgement in small claims court, but how will you collect? That is another dilemma.

What would be the problem? I imagine it'd be straightforward but I'm naive about this stuff.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#249

Post by olliej »

calgoo wrote: post #83
viraptor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True in theory, but because of exclusivity deals with venues, they can't use "any venue". Basically at the level of Taylor Swift, she would have to create her own arenas for this to work. She could well do it one day though...

She is big enough to build her mega-church like venues, or just rent a mega church. The has way to many of those anyway, so some actual use might come from them. The important thing would be for Taylor and a few others to give the middle finger to live nation / ticketmaster, but like mentioned earlier, its not in her or her labels interest.

Mega churches do not have anything like the capacity required for folk like Taylor swift, etc

Not in capacity of people nor production facilities.

The whole reason for this suit is that essentially the same outfits doing ticketing have exclusive licenses with the majority of facilities that can support the big acts.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#250

Post by gosub100 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #200
bobthepanda wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.sa…

Then you'd get into lobbying, I'm sure.

Ticketmaster: oh the tragedy, our shareholders..they might not get as much profit! housing! think of the homeless! if you build this arena, it will sit dormant 95% of the year, this space could be used to house homeless, so VOTE NO! on question 45 to protect $CITY's homeless!

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