"Competition... is intense", hah. TicketMaster's big advantage is that competition between venues isn't intense. Smaller cities will generally only have 1-2 ve

"Competition... is intense", hah. TicketMaster's big advantage is that competition between venues isn't intense. Smaller cities will generally only have 1-2 venues of a decently large size, especially if you require things like alcohol licenses and permission to stay open late at night. In any market where opening a new competitor was easy, someone would be fighting TicketMaster on prices and services. But since they deal in heavy venue lock-in, and opening new venues is essentially impossible (hi there, zoning laws), they get to gouge basically everyone involved.