3 ms·

Finally. As someone who is active in the local music scene, I’ve spent thousands on junk fees over the years. Not sure why it has taken this long.

vundercind 2y ago
Because we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in the 80s :-(
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > Because we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in the 80s My kids have never known a time without the DoJ rubber-stamping every monopoly-building merger it could.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Yeah, it’s not just failing to break up monopolies, it’s allowing mergers to go through that would’ve been laughably doomed to fail to pass regulatory muster in earlier decades.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Well, there was arguably a point to be had in the 90s for relaxing standards. The web was new. It was allowing over the top and disruption of a lot of legacy businesses. It wasn't clear what constituted a market in those times. However, by 2009, standards should have been reimposed. That largely didn't happen. Regulators simply got used to letting things go through, and so they kept doing that.
      - vundercind 2y ago
        If that was the reason, they should have restricted it to tech companies. Instead, things like traditional media and food became harmfully consolidated over the same time.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        The thinking was, and IMHO there's some merit to this, "giant new tech companies are going to be created by this thing called the web, so maybe legacy companies need to divest / merge to meet the competition." And I'd argue a lot of non-defense government philosophy was also following DoD's "the Cold War is over, budgets will shrink, so defense companies need to merge to survive."
    - thfuran 2y ago
      Stock buybacks didn't used to be allowed either, but trillions of dollars have been pulled out of companies to pump stocks in the last several years.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    I can offer this napkin to wipe off the trickle down if you need it
  - theogravity 2y ago
    Would the Adobe + Figma merge failure count?
    - eric-hu 2y ago
      > Sources familiar with the matter said that while the two companies had been in constant touch with antitrust agencies in the UK, EU, and United States to work out a path to close the deal, the UK regulators have in recent weeks indicated that it would require remedies for Adobe to divest Figma design, a core asset of the acquisition. https://www.reuters.com/technology/adobe-figma-terminate-20-bln-deal-2023-12-18/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/adobe-figma-terminate-20-... > On December 18, 2023, Figma and Adobe both announced they were mutually agreeing to abandon their merger,[17][18] with Adobe citing that there was "no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figma#Attempted_acquisition_by_Adobe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figma#Attempted_acquisition_by... Only if you count UK/EU regulators.
- fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
  here's one landmark case in 1992. There have been more since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak_Co._v._Image_Technical_Services,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak_Co._v._Image_Tec....
bell-cot 2y ago
if( $Voters_Apathetic && ( $Political_Donations_From_Monopolists > $Political_Donations_From_Antimonopolists ) ) then { ...
- xenospn 2y ago
  Honestly, I don’t think they had to do a lot of political maneuvering. They were just allowed to grow unchecked, and no one was bothered. Until now.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  LYV has grown enough, politicians are ready to short and harvest it.
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
  It’s true but that first condition does have a lot of weight behind it
cbsmith 2y ago
Particularly for the local music scene, where Live Nation usually isn't the promoter, the junk fees aren't coming from them. Gotta remember Ticketmaster's margins are actually pretty thin.
- aodin 2y ago
  In Live Nation's latest 10-Q filing they listed the operating margin of their ticketing segment at 32%, with a non-GAAP AOI margin of 39%. [1] https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/sec-filings/all-sec-filings/content/0001335258-24-000071/0001335258-24-000071.pdf https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/sec-filings/al...
  - cbsmith 2y ago
    Which is on the low side for an entertainment software company. Also worth noting that most of their Ticketing growth is coming from international markets, where they aren't at all a monopoly, and yet the margins there are the same... and it is even more misleading than that, the denominator for that margin isn't including the bulk of the price people are paying for the ticket, which flows through to venues (where the margins are even lower). Per said same report, if you add Ticketing & Converts --and Ticketmaster sells tickets for a lot of other customers who aren't Live Nation, so if anything that is under-counting the total value of the tickets sold by Ticketmaster-- the combined margin is around 8%. So that's ~8% of the money you spend on a ticket that is going to Live Nation. In fairness though, I did misspeak. The margins on ticket resale are quite big (and that's a driver of much of the profit margin in that report). That's usually not what people are referring to when they say "junk fees". When people refer to "junk fees", they're normally talking about the fees associated with primary ticket sales, which have much lower margins (closer to 7-8%), because most of the money for those fees flows through to the other parties involved in the event. This has all been documented on several occasions. TM's blog actually recently put out a decent article walking people through it: https://blog.ticketmaster.com/the-truth-about-ticket-prices/ https://blog.ticketmaster.com/the-truth-about-ticket-prices/. The primary ticket sales service game is largely about volume. You've got an absurd amount of money being exchanged, so taking a small bit of it can work out to significant revenue, but it doesn't dramatically change the price people end up paying for their tickets. To me, worse than the fees, is all the crap "promotions" that Ticketmaster tries to get you in on after you decide to buy your ticket from the venue... and it's a pretty good signal about the low margins on those sales. It's super annoying, but it makes sense for them to do it because any lost sales at the end of the funnel there are comparatively a small price to pay for the money they're getting from the promotions (which generate about half as much revenue for Live Nation as ticketing, but at less than a third of the cost). No question that people are getting a raw deal when they buy tickets on Ticketmaster, but the perception of the problem is really different from the reality. [For transparency: I spent 7 years in the live events industry. I now have nothing to do with it.]

vundercind 2y ago

Because we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in the 80s :-(

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> Because we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in the 80s My kids have never known a time without the DoJ rubber-stamping every monopoly-building merger it could.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Yeah, it’s not just failing to break up monopolies, it’s allowing mergers to go through that would’ve been laughably doomed to fail to pass regulatory muster in earlier decades.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Well, there was arguably a point to be had in the 90s for relaxing standards. The web was new. It was allowing over the top and disruption of a lot of legacy businesses. It wasn't clear what constituted a market in those times. However, by 2009, standards should have been reimposed. That largely didn't happen. Regulators simply got used to letting things go through, and so they kept doing that.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      If that was the reason, they should have restricted it to tech companies. Instead, things like traditional media and food became harmfully consolidated over the same time.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        The thinking was, and IMHO there's some merit to this, "giant new tech companies are going to be created by this thing called the web, so maybe legacy companies need to divest / merge to meet the competition." And I'd argue a lot of non-defense government philosophy was also following DoD's "the Cold War is over, budgets will shrink, so defense companies need to merge to survive."
  - thfuran 2y ago
    Stock buybacks didn't used to be allowed either, but trillions of dollars have been pulled out of companies to pump stocks in the last several years.
- dylan604 2y ago
  I can offer this napkin to wipe off the trickle down if you need it
- theogravity 2y ago
  Would the Adobe + Figma merge failure count?
  - eric-hu 2y ago
    > Sources familiar with the matter said that while the two companies had been in constant touch with antitrust agencies in the UK, EU, and United States to work out a path to close the deal, the UK regulators have in recent weeks indicated that it would require remedies for Adobe to divest Figma design, a core asset of the acquisition. https://www.reuters.com/technology/adobe-figma-terminate-20-bln-deal-2023-12-18/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/adobe-figma-terminate-20-... > On December 18, 2023, Figma and Adobe both announced they were mutually agreeing to abandon their merger,[17][18] with Adobe citing that there was "no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figma#Attempted_acquisition_by_Adobe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figma#Attempted_acquisition_by... Only if you count UK/EU regulators.
fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
here's one landmark case in 1992. There have been more since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak_Co._v._Image_Technical_Services,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak_Co._v._Image_Tec....

bell-cot 2y ago

if( $Voters_Apathetic && ( $Political_Donations_From_Monopolists > $Political_Donations_From_Antimonopolists ) ) then { ...

xenospn 2y ago
Honestly, I don’t think they had to do a lot of political maneuvering. They were just allowed to grow unchecked, and no one was bothered. Until now.
candiddevmike 2y ago
LYV has grown enough, politicians are ready to short and harvest it.
zeroonetwothree 2y ago
It’s true but that first condition does have a lot of weight behind it

cbsmith 2y ago

Particularly for the local music scene, where Live Nation usually isn't the promoter, the junk fees aren't coming from them. Gotta remember Ticketmaster's margins are actually pretty thin.

aodin 2y ago
In Live Nation's latest 10-Q filing they listed the operating margin of their ticketing segment at 32%, with a non-GAAP AOI margin of 39%. [1] https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/sec-filings/all-sec-filings/content/0001335258-24-000071/0001335258-24-000071.pdf https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/sec-filings/al...
- cbsmith 2y ago
  Which is on the low side for an entertainment software company. Also worth noting that most of their Ticketing growth is coming from international markets, where they aren't at all a monopoly, and yet the margins there are the same... and it is even more misleading than that, the denominator for that margin isn't including the bulk of the price people are paying for the ticket, which flows through to venues (where the margins are even lower). Per said same report, if you add Ticketing & Converts --and Ticketmaster sells tickets for a lot of other customers who aren't Live Nation, so if anything that is under-counting the total value of the tickets sold by Ticketmaster-- the combined margin is around 8%. So that's ~8% of the money you spend on a ticket that is going to Live Nation. In fairness though, I did misspeak. The margins on ticket resale are quite big (and that's a driver of much of the profit margin in that report). That's usually not what people are referring to when they say "junk fees". When people refer to "junk fees", they're normally talking about the fees associated with primary ticket sales, which have much lower margins (closer to 7-8%), because most of the money for those fees flows through to the other parties involved in the event. This has all been documented on several occasions. TM's blog actually recently put out a decent article walking people through it: https://blog.ticketmaster.com/the-truth-about-ticket-prices/ https://blog.ticketmaster.com/the-truth-about-ticket-prices/. The primary ticket sales service game is largely about volume. You've got an absurd amount of money being exchanged, so taking a small bit of it can work out to significant revenue, but it doesn't dramatically change the price people end up paying for their tickets. To me, worse than the fees, is all the crap "promotions" that Ticketmaster tries to get you in on after you decide to buy your ticket from the venue... and it's a pretty good signal about the low margins on those sales. It's super annoying, but it makes sense for them to do it because any lost sales at the end of the funnel there are comparatively a small price to pay for the money they're getting from the promotions (which generate about half as much revenue for Live Nation as ticketing, but at less than a third of the cost). No question that people are getting a raw deal when they buy tickets on Ticketmaster, but the perception of the problem is really different from the reality. [For transparency: I spent 7 years in the live events industry. I now have nothing to do with it.]