Ticketmaster is such an obvious monopoly in plain sight. The only reason I can see the FTC not more aggressively pursuing it (and instead wasting time on big-tech) is the people in power at the FTC don't go to enough concerts or care about a $10 markup on their tickets.<p>For an American age 15 to 25 today, much more of their spending power, time, and opportunity is lost to Ticketmaster than FB/IG/Tiktok/Twitter monopolistic behavior combined.<p>Hopefully the Taylor Swift ticket sale breaks into the Overton window and results in actual enforcement. Ticketmaster should have to divest Livenation and every other ticketing company it's acquired since 2010.<p>I say this as the PM of the first attempt to sell tickets within Facebook Events in 2015. Even for Facebook, it was virtually impossible to get share because all the major venues and artists have exclusive lockups with Ticketmaster or a subsidiary of theirs.
Strange story… this guys startup filed an antitrust lawsuit against TicketMaster which ended up with TicketMaster… acquiring his company? Seems like something is being left out.
Ticketmaster is a monopoly and they maintain this through monopolizing venues. The US has seen this kind of monpoly before and it led to antritrust action, notably in US v. Paramount Pictures [1], which led to the forced separation of studios, theaters and distrbituion. It should be a clear model that Ticketmaster should not be able to own or have exclusive deals with any venues.<p>The dirty little secret of Ticketmaster is that most artists actually <i>like</i> that Ticketmaster exists. Why? Because they are sort of a reputational sacrificial anode. They are the token bad guys.<p>Imagine if a band started selling tickets for $300. Fans might complain and the artists might look bad. They don't want that. But if they charge $150 and Ticketmaster charges $100 in "fees" then Ticketmaster are the bad guys. The artists take no heat from that.<p>So the second thing we need is transparent pricing. There should be absolutely no fee sharing between Ticketmaster and artists because that's what happens now. It's the same as "fuel surcharges" on plane tickets. That too should be illegal. The ticket just costs more. That's it.<p>The third leg of this are the ticket reselling sites that fuel demand. Another dirty little secret is that the artists themselves sell tickets directly on these sites too. On the principle of transparent pricing I'd like to see this outlawed too. But again artists like to just blame this on Ticketmaster and Stubhub.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic...</a>.
Years ago I saw a post on HN (or maybe reddit) about using reverse dutch auctions for these sort of situations and how it provided the fairest outcomes for all parties.<p>It was the first time I had ever heard of that concept, and since then I have felt that it really is the best way to create a fair market clearing price for all participants where the maker with a limited stock of product (taylor swift) and the buyers (fans) get to participate.<p>Edit: oops - I can't find the original article I referenced, but someone else posted this on the same concept which is now on the front page of HN:
<a href="https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/" rel="nofollow">https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/</a>
Hard for me not to hear the name Pearl Jam whenever I see ticketmaster. Eddie Vedder's Audible that came out last year had a brief section on their encounter. The revolving door of regulators to big industry wasn't painted in a good light there.
Can somebody explain the power balance in that industry to me? What prevents Taylor Swift (or any other artist) from selling their own ticket via a shopify shop or similar? If they don't like TicketMaster, why are they
using it?
So apparently this is the context I was missing - ticketmaster wasn't able to handle the load of selling tickets to Taylor Swift's new tour because it was bombarded with "3.5 billion ticket requests from fans, bots and scalpers"[0].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-questions-ticketmaster-after-taylor-swift-sales-complaints-2022-11-17/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-questions-ticket...</a>
How did Taylor Swift gradually become one of the biggest, if not the biggest pop star, all of a sudden? She has gotten bigger and bigger ever since the Kanye West incident 13 years ago. She’s not a great performer like Beyoncé and she’s not a great singer like Adele. What’s going on here?
From the linked lawsuit <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.636257.1.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.63...</a>, one of the major complaints is:<p>> Defendants [LiveNation and Ticketmaster] have also recently begun using
their unique multi-level leverage (which arose from their merger) to prevent artists from
using Songkick’s competitive services, and to tie (1) Live Nation’s concert promotion
services, Live Nation’s artist management services, Ticketmaster’s concert venue
ticketing services, and/or use of the venues Defendants own, manage, and/or control; to
(2) the artists’ use of Ticketmaster’s own artist presale ticketing services (recently
rebranded as Ticketmaster’s “OnTour” division).<p>> Michael Rapino, LiveNation’s CEO and Director, has admitted that artists today make 95% of their income
from live music events and that Live Nation is now the “largest single financer” of
artists worldwide (more than record companies). Armed as he is with this power over
artists’ careers, Mr. Rapino has used this position to intimidate artists into using
Ticketmaster over any other artist presale ticketing service. Indeed, Mr. Rapino made
several threats to withhold Defendants’ services if artists insisted on using Songkick’s
artist presale ticketing services. He also told several artists that they could not take a
single ticket off of the Ticketmaster system, period.<p>It's worth noting, in this context, that <a href="https://www.quinnemanuel.com/the-firm/our-notable-victories/victory-march-2018-110-million-antitrust-and-trade-secret-victory-against-ticketmaster-and-live-nation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.quinnemanuel.com/the-firm/our-notable-victories/...</a> linked in the original thread states (though certainly from a self-promoting source) that:<p>> Following fact and expert discovery, the defendants moved for summary judgment on all of Songkick’s antitrust and non-trade secret claims. The Court denied that motion in its entirety on the papers. Before that decision, no antitrust plaintiff had ever withstood summary judgment against Ticketmaster, making Songkick the first. The decision also set up for trial (for the first time ever) what the defendants’ lead attorney acknowledged was a claim that put the legality of Ticketmaster’s exclusive dealing practices “squarely at issue.” Faced with Songkick’s claim and the prospect of a looming trial against Quinn Emanuel in late January 2018, the defendants resolved the dispute by paying Songkick $110 million in settlement (nearly 100% of its lost going concern value damages) and acquiring its assets for a confidential sum.<p>(Note that Songkick announced it would shut down in October 2017. It's very possible that Songkick was likely to succeed on the merits but was forced to take a settlement to meet the needs of its team and investors.)<p>IMO it's vital that this be taken seriously. An increasingly gloves-off anticompetitive Ticketmaster, in the midst of a global recession, could do irreparable damage to an entire generation of musical creators. Something has to change.