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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

#81

Post by realce »

calgoo wrote: post #74

So in my opinion, the fans suing ticketmaster should sue Taylor Swift for using ticket master. Then she can sue her music company for doing business with ticket master. its not like selling tickets is not a solved problem, so why are we even bothering with this BS and just not using another service? O the music labels like them because they get sweet deals? Well again, sue Taylor Swift and the label, not the shitty t…

> why are we even bothering with this BS and just not using another service

Considering it's an antitrust suit, the answer should be self-evident.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#82

Post by freedomben »

calgoo wrote: post #74

So in my opinion, the fans suing ticketmaster should sue Taylor Swift for using ticket master. Then she can sue her music company for doing business with ticket master. its not like selling tickets is not a solved problem, so why are we even bothering with this BS and just not using another service? O the music labels like them because they get sweet deals? Well again, sue Taylor Swift and the label, not the shitty t…

I think it would be easier to get some Taylor Swift fans to chew their own arms off than it would to get them to sue her for anything. I've never known a group of people that better fit the word "fanatic" :-)

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#83

Post by calgoo »

viraptor wrote: post #73
amadeuspagel wrote: post #68

The only relevant monopoly for a Taylor Swift concert is Taylor Swift. Fans would use any platform to buy to tickets for any venue in any city.

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.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#84

Post by to11mtm »

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")

Thanks for this, it provides a huge level of context as to how bad things really are and lays it out in a fairly decent way.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#85

Post by freedomben »

paxys wrote: post #77

While I 100% support this action, I feel like people are going to be disappointed to find that if/when the dust settles and Live Nation is reined in (big if), tickets for the Taylor Swift concert or the NBA finals aren't suddenly coming down to $50. With a growing population, people with more disposable income and more interest in such events in general the fundamental economy of live events is very different than wh…

Yep. I despise TM and think this needs to change, but the only thing it's going to fix (from the consumer's perspective, not the artists et al) is the abysmal and abusive customer service (that doesn't really exist), not the high prices. The prices are pretty much exactly what the market will bear, and that will be true no matter who the middleman is.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#86

Post by fsckboy »

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…

>In other words, the artists, venues, producers, and Ticketmaster are in cahoots to fleece fans for as much money as possible

yes, but they are in cahoots with the fans to fleece the fans. Fans are willing to pay big money to see these shows, that's who pays the high prices. If fans didn't pay the high prices, the prices would drop.

Your comment (the word fleece) suggests you are at least somewhat judgmental about "greed": this type of judgment is why bands try to pretend that they sell the tickets for a "fair" price, and that's what creates the 2ndary market, and that's what creates the kickbacks and the need for a scapegoat.

you expect to pay a high price for a Picasso at auction. You should expect also to pay a high price for sellout, SRO, line around the block shows too. Who should collect that money? fans who got in first? fake fans who pretended to be fans to get in first? People who are attracted by the arbitrage price differential? Or, I dunno, how about Picasso? The band.

The biggest fans in football, season ticket holders who slog through all the bad seasons, frequently sell their superbowl tickets when the price gets high enough. They'd rather have the money, that's the nature of money, and people.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#87

Post by busterarm »

bangaroo wrote: post #70

this is all well and good but i know from personal experience that all the secondary marketplaces (stubhub, seatgeek) are pushing to do this (literally lobbying the government actively) because it helps them more easily do their secondary market selling. ticketmaster is a grotesque monopoly, but the secondary marketplaces are worried that ticketmaster will consolidate too much industry control through their vertical…

This needs to be seen more widely and is entirely true. I had friends who worked in ticket brokering and the depth and collusion of that market is a fascinating rabbit hole. In fact a lot of what happens is probably illegal.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#88

Post by xp84 »

boringg wrote: post #38
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…

No way - get rid of them and there will be more competition in the market better pricing and maybe a less homogenous (and terrible) experience.

Yes, it seems like in 1985 Ticketmaster and the couple of big competitors they gobbled up (I recall there was at least one other called Bass) could justify their existence decently. The operated brick and mortar locations where you could buy tickets, as well as a call center where you could call in to buy tickets. Today though, arguably without their many tentacles like Live Nation that guarantee them a cut of everything, they have no moat at all. Oh gee, if only we could figure out how to charge credit cards, show a seat map for you to pick your seat, and print barcodes on paper / email a barcode to attendees. So yes, I would expect that relative to verticals where things require actual ingenuity or skill to do a good job, it would be easy for people who operate venues to either just roll their own ticketing systems, or contract with dozens of vendors who would compete on their value. Of course, venue owners who are not themselves part of Live Naton itself could do this today, but the gross agreements where ticketmaster inflates fees and splits them with everybody in order to gain an exclusivity contract makes this uncommon. The whole thing is so corrupt and greedy it's sickening.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#89

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

CPLX wrote: post #22
makestuff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The merger was completed in 2010, so the Obama administration. However, the country was coming out of the great recession and the last thing the administration needed was bad PR for "stopping a merger that would prevent people from losing their jobs".

Your first sentence here is correct. The second sentence is ridiculous. The Obama administration was pro-monopolist basically across the board for eight straight years. The record is pretty easy to understand.

> The Obama administration was pro-monopolist basically across the board for eight straight years.

It might be more accurate to say that rubber-stamping mergers maxed-out under the Obama DoJ.

    Comcast - NBCUniversal (2011)
    
    AT&T - T-Mobile (2011)
    
    Express Scripts - Medco Health Solutions (2012)
    
    Google - Motorola Mobility (2012)
    
    Anheuser-Busch InBev - Grupo Modelo (2013)
    
    US Airways - American Airlines (2013)
    
    Oracle - Sun Microsystems (2010)
    
    Comcast - Time Warner Cable (2014)
    
    Heinz - Kraft Foods (2015)
    
    AT&T - DirecTV (2015)
Administrations before and after were almost-but-maybe-a-tiny-bit-less eager to approve competition+job killing mergers.

What DoJs were not eager to do was push back against pressure from Elected Congresspeople who 1) held DoJ purse strings and 2) had elections that needed funding.

Re: Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

#90

Post by a_wild_dandan »

busterarm wrote: post #78
seatac76 wrote: post #5

Finally. Between the market dominance via Live Nation and Ticketmaster merge. The venue exclusivity contracts they insist upon. They are a grotesque monopoly.

They are but the DoJ is getting involved 30 years too late. They crushed all of the meaningful competition that long ago. Even breaking the company up into parts wouldn't suddenly fix the industry.

Well that's good. Antitrust action isn't meant to suddenly fix anything overnight.
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