261–270 of 397 posts
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And then what, check the ID of 50k people at the door?
Why not? They check hand bags anyway. Even if you don't check everybody it is a huge deterrent to scalpers if the buyer can not be sure that they will be allowed in. Imagine paying for expensive tickets, travelling a long distance, paying for a hotel room etc. And then you're not getting in to see the show.
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Potentially, a big player with money to burn can undercut them, but it does not look like that’s going to happen.
> Potentially, a big player with money to burn can undercut them I guarantee you that Ticketmaster's pockets are much deeper. They have entrenched themselves. This romantic notion that consumers should strike against situations like this or that smaller players should find edges in are just not realistic to me because of the entrenchment, coercion and scarcity at play here. A very popular band in the 90s tried to fig…
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Potentially, a big player with money to burn can undercut them, but it does not look like that’s going to happen.
> a big player with money to burn can undercut them Unclear. There are limited cities that can support a 30,000+-seat stadium. Most of them have some already. Unless there is way more demand for these venues than I realise, I'd also guess they're close to saturation, i.e. adding another venue would result in lower utilisation. This natural monopoly in large concert venues creates a condition where winning is Pyrrhic,…
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…
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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
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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?
I think the real issue is the limited supply of tickets to the most popular shows. Supply and demand dictates that the prices for these limited goods be very high, yet social norms discourage artists from charging the true market value for their tickets (fans will rebel against their favourite artist for perceived greed). So TM provides an effective reputation-laundering service to the artists and collects a hefty fee for it. If the DoJ were to win their case and succeed in breaking up the TM monopoly then I bet the extra revenue would go to some other ticket brokers, not to the artist or into consumers’ pockets.
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…
Sounds identical to health insurers. We need a new word for this arrangement. “Cartel” probably comes the closest but doesn’t feel quite right. It’s like a cartel but it’s lead by one “extractor” (front of house, Ticketmaster in this case).
For what it's worth, they refer to themselves as a "syndicate".
CalFAIR charges 2-3x market rate premiums (for similar houses in the same area insured by the companies that own CalFAIR -- this is on top of charging more due to risk), and then refuses to pay out when your house is damaged, engages in lowballing, etc, etc.
Since all the insurance companies that are "competing" against them own stakes in it, the moral hazard should be obvious. Predictably, CalFAIR's market share has been rapidly increasing in recent years. They're supposed to be temporary insurance of last resort, but they've climbed to over 3% market share.
https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/19/california-insurance-crisi...
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…
...does that make me more morally qualified to complain than other people? Why?
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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.
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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.
They have already built the electronic ticketing and transfer system that would allow them to prevent resale of tickets at a profit, the system is done. They just choose not to use it that way (and I'd guess artists/labels/venus are in on this too -- what the ticketmaster system does make possible is for them all to take a bite of the scalped ticket resale price!)