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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

#251

Post by olliej »

m348e912 wrote: post #122
sahila wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it is in her interest to not deal with Ticketmaster, her business is performing life music. She as her team aren't trying to create work for themselves to screw TM, they want to do what they do. Imagine trying to set up logistics at a venue/church which has never held a large concert before.

Have you ever been to a mega church? They basically are a large concert. Not the 80,000 people kind, but of the size that would rival a decent percentage of touring acts. Lakewood church in Houston has 45,000 attendees a week. I think the church idea is a brilliant TM workaround, until they lock that up too.

Average Taylor swift concerts are 80000+, your example of the biggest available facility is both atypical (it was originally a non-church facility) and it’s still smaller than small concerts.

This is before we get to the notoriously censorious and fragile beliefs of the people operating those facilities.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#252

Post by nrmitchi »

andjd wrote: post #15

One important thing to know is that the venues/artists often get a kickback of part of the Ticketmaster fees. In other words, the artists, venues, producers, and Ticketmaster are in cahoots to fleece fans for as much money as possible, and Ticketmaster is willing to play the 'bad guy' and take the blame for high prices, and they get to keep a bigger slice of the overall pie than they would in a highly competitive mar…

> One important thing to know is that the venues/artists often get a kickback of part of the Ticketmaster fees

Ya, sure, but you also have to remember that Live Nation often owns the venues, and manages the artists.

So what you're kind of saying is "venues(Live Nation)/artists(also Live Nation) get a kickback of part of the Ticketmaster (also Live Nation) fees".

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#253

Post by codazoda »

tayo42 wrote: post #178
tomjakubowski wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radiohead does this, banning scalping and limiting prices/supply. It seems to work out pretty well with the fan base. May be due to the band having obsessive and largely left-wing fans

How did they stop scalping?

They have tried a bunch of methods like demand based pricing, ID verification, electronic tickets, and lotteries. I suspect these things only work a little and each has its own problem side-effects.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#255

Post by tmpz22 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #242
darkwizard42 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

So what makes it better? Should we be thankful for the current status quo?

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#256

Post by ysavir »

bombcar wrote: post #225
TheGRS wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just being devil's advocate since I also don't necessarily agree that TSwift could build a venue in every market, but there are plenty of large-scale events that use open fields and tents and aren't going to cost billions to setup.

That's how I took it, if she wanted to rent out a field and import equipment, she'd still sell out, and at whatever price she wanted to charge.

Of course, then it also falls to her and her team to handle permits, hiring employees for the concert (and this would be a one time thing for those employees?), training, arranging materials, foods, and anything else, figure out parking and transportation, manage any necessary insurance, and whatever else is needed.

A venue is more than having a place, it's having everything necessary to handle an immense volume of people gathering, acting, and dispersing from a single location in a safe and orderly fashion.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#257

Post by toast0 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #205
philistine wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then perform smaller venues and ration tickets to your most-devoted fans. Companies end up bankrupt with your line of thinking. Assuming infrastructure is sufficient for each situation to be profitable is magical thinking.

> Companies end up bankrupt with your line of thinking The point is artists want to have their cake and eat it too. Any artist performing at a stadium could make a solid profit performing at non-TM 5 to 20k-seat arena while charging a similar (or lower) price. They don't because it's more lucrative to perform at a 70,000-seat stadium. LiveNation is a monopolist. But they also give many market participants cover to ch…

It would probably need to be a different show. Playing to a large stadium means you can afford more trucks and a bigger spectacle. If you're playing for 5,000 people, you've got to tone it down, or you won't make a profit.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#258

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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…

Even if I take at face value everything you put in your comment, what is the problem? You seem to be arguing "Popular artists will want to be paid what the market is willing to bear!!" And??? I'd rather the artists get paid than Ticketmaster.

Besides, in my experience, I've seen that artists generally don't actually want this (at least solely), because they want their concerts to be populated by passionate fans as opposed to just rich fucks that tend to be more boring as audience members. Don't a bunch of artists have deals where longtime active members in their fan clubs get first access to tickets so that they don't have to pay more on scalper sites?

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#259

Post by cypherpunks01 »

lolinder wrote: post #212
carlosjobim wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then what, check the ID of 50k people at the door?

The work of checking IDs is mostly done in US venues already, for 21+ drinking wristbands. It would have to be done differently, for sure, but a good portion of that labor is already being incurred.

More likely, the venues don't have much economic incentive, if any, to reduce ticket reselling and scalping.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#260

Post by KoftaBob »

voidwtf wrote: post #64
andjd wrote: post #15

One important thing to know is that the venues/artists often get a kickback of part of the Ticketmaster fees. In other words, the artists, venues, producers, and Ticketmaster are in cahoots to fleece fans for as much money as possible, and Ticketmaster is willing to play the 'bad guy' and take the blame for high prices, and they get to keep a bigger slice of the overall pie than they would in a highly competitive mar…

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…

> they demand exclusivity in their contracts

Right off the bat, exclusivity clauses shouldn't be legal, it's the definition of anti-competitive.

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