a) The barriers supporting Ticketmaster's current monopoly are pretty significant - mainly, exclusivity deals with venues. Ironically, the most successful chal

a) The barriers supporting Ticketmaster's current monopoly are pretty significant - mainly, exclusivity deals with venues. Ironically, the most successful challenge thus far has come from LiveNation... which managed to one-up Ticketmaster in some markets by owning both venues and artists. (And is now trying to merge with Ticketmaster, pending fairly blatant antitrust issues). b) Interesting sidenote: in its day, Ticketmaster was the tech-savvy upstart, aggressively competing on both the business and tech side with the then-dominant Ticketron. (That's not to say that they're not a monopolist ripe for the picking...)