Cool, can't wait for the slap on the wrist and a $4 coupon we'll get in 2031.
Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
41–50 of 193 posts
Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#42The 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…
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.
Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#43Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes you wonder why the DoJ settled so early. Or, rather, it doesn’t really make you wonder at all. It’s obvious there was a case and they should have let their lawsuit run. I wonder why they didn’t?
Bribes, campaign donations, presidential ballrooms. The current administration has settled MANY cases that they'd already won, it's very easy to buy favors now.
and sign of law enforcement taking tax payer money and not working.
Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#45Earlier 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's long been speculated that they clandestinely participate in the resale market. If the goal of a business is to maximize profit and they control the market and technology around it, they have everything they need to push prices to the absolute limit that a customer is willing to pay. Based on what came out during the course of the trial, it would not surprise me at all if they are double-selling tickets.
it's all an aesthetic experience, no? for the live entertainment business, it is aesthetically important to fans of Bruce Springsteen that his tickets have a number on them that appears on a website that feels good, and that number happens to be "price of ticket," even if hardly anyone is actually paying that number - they are usually paying more.
personally, i don't think any of this legal shit matters. the sherman antitrust act is 1 paragraph long, so it is flexible in terms of how you want this stuff to work, from a, "I would like the world to work as though it were governed by a priesthood" point of view. so it's reductive to talk about, what does the law say? very little of interest.
how should it work? live nation should be able to do whatever the hell it wants. it would make more money for everyone, at the cost of nothing. it would be good for the music industry to make more money. apple should not have lost the antitrust case over books either. nobody forces you to go to concerts! if you have a problem with ticket prices, make tiktoks complaining about it targeted at the artists. stop listening to their music. but IMO, the live performance cultural phenomenon, it doesn't benefit from this kind of regulation.
Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#46Now do service fees and 'convenience' fees. Every ticket I buy for a movie somehow costs $2 extra now. (As with everything else). Robbery.
The one that pisses me off is when the waitress tells you to pay with your phone, and it's charged a "convenience fee."
Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#47from 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.
From AP
> The companies could also be assessed penalties. In addition, sanctions could result in court orders that they divest themselves of some entities, including venues such as amphitheaters that they own.
Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#48The 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…
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…
Or easiest is to require KYC for all the buyers (tie ticket to person instead of allowing bulk purchases) and limit ability to resale at scale. This would easily allow them to blacklist scalpers. It's not like they don't know who you are from the payment information, and tickets are often verified against driver licenses at entry.
Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#49Now do service fees and 'convenience' fees. Every ticket I buy for a movie somehow costs $2 extra now. (As with everything else). Robbery.
California, Minnesota, Maryland, and New York have
And then the restaurant lobby got the CA one rescinded for restaurant junk fees, which were probably the biggest culprit most people encounter day-to-day.
Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds
#50> The jury determined that Ticketmaster had overcharged consumers by $1.72 for each ticket. I think the decimal point is a few digits too many to the left here... The various "fees" routinely add up to hundreds
That was the first part that jumped out at me.
Apparently the state AGs dropped one of the charges that would have led to a more reasonable number there to try to make the decision easier for the jury.