6 ms·
If Live Nation-Ticketmaster is not a monopoly then there is no such thing as a monopoly.
by julianeon 2y ago
If Live Nation-Ticketmaster is not a monopoly then there is no such thing as a monopoly.
- paulddraper 2y agoBut monopolies are not illegal. Violating antitrust law is illegal. --- You don't violate federal law just by being the only company to sell canine banana hammocks.
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoI agree that is what is the law is and even that that is what the law should be. It is also important to note however that the actual title of the Sherman Antitrust Act is "An Act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies." So it isn't fair to say that anti-competitive practices and monopolies are completely orthogonal (although strictly speaking they are) because monopolies are a perfect tool with which to engage in anti-competitive practices. In my opinion I don't think protecting entertainment from anti-competitive practices even matters that much anyway though. Your ability to watch your favorite singer live is really not the same as something like oil or trains which are actually important to the economy.
- paulddraper 2y agoYour quote itself presents the question of lawful monopoly vs unlawful monopoly.
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoI don't think I implied otherwise.
- EasyMark 2y agoAre you arguing that they aren't hurting consumers? Just look at ticket prices over the years as more and more competition was eliminated, as well as the tactics they use to control artists. You aren't going to have much luck I suspect.
- paulddraper 2y agoNo. I am pointing out that being a monopoly (i.e. the only business choosing to offer a product/service) is not illegal. Engaging in anticompetive behavior is illegal. And the Justice Dept has accused Ticketmaster of doing that.
- Loughla 2y agoI was just looking at that last night. [Artist that was super popular in 2006ish] tickets when we went at the absolute height of his popularity were $40 for lawn seats at a local venue [Same artist] at the same venue in the same lawn seating is now $380. What's the difference? Guess who bought the venue.
- pwarner 2y agoDon't forget 2024 you probably has a much higher disposable income than 2006 you... And might be willing to pay to feel young again for a few hours. Off to buy some late 90s band tickets!
- bear141 2y agoWow. This hurts.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago> What's the difference? Disposable income of target audience. Greater number of people in target audience. Fewer shows. Technology enabling more accurate pricing so each customer is able to be targeted to pay as much as they can afford (price discrimination). Etc.
- Aunche 2y agoAlso, artists can no longer make money by selling music, so the majority of their income comes from performances now.
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
- ineedaj0b 2y agotechnically you are correct but this isn't a thread of lawyers/attorneys, this is a thread with higher than average autism. Cleaving words and being clever with 'harmless' misdirection and turn of phrase is not welcome.
- dclowd9901 2y agoIf LiveNation/TicketMaster aren’t violating antitrust law, there is no antitrust law.
- 0xcde4c3db 2y agoAs I understand it, a wrinkle with this distinction is that having a monopoly through sheer competitive goodness isn't illegal, but actively trying to construct a monopoly almost always is illegal. And with the benefit of hindsight, I don't see how Ticketmaster's acquisition of Live Nation can be construed in good faith as anything but the latter.
- vikingerik 2y agoThe monopoly is really the artists, who then delegate to the venues. Like, Bruce Springsteen ticket prices are high because only he is Bruce Springsteen and nobody else is. The real monopoly is on being Bruce Springsteen. Prices are high because of supply and demand for that artist; Bruce Springsteen can only put on so many shows for so many seats and there is far more demand than that, no matter who is selling the tickets. Live Nation-Ticketmaster only gets the monopoly power delegated from the artists and venues. If you break that up into competing ticket providers, that doesn't do anything to the underlying prices, tickets will still be resold on secondary markets until the prices reach supply-demand equilibrium. Busting LN-TM hypothetically doesn't even do anything to the fees. The market is set by what customers will pay, and it doesn't matter to them what the breakdown is between going to the middlemen or going to the artist. At most, busting LN-TM does create competition for lower fees, so that the artist gets more of the revenue. But it's not clear at all that that's a matter for courts to forcibly impose. (I see the downvotes. The Internet hivemind will always think it's entitled to ignore the laws of supply and demand, even on HN. Ticket prices are high because demand exceeds supply and customers choose to pay it, not because of a monopolistic reseller entity.)
- alfalfasprout 2y agoYou're really missing the point. The issue here isn't that top artists can't sell their tickets at a high price. It's that venues have exclusivity deals w/ ticketmaster/livenation and ticketmaster/livenation ultimately charge outrageous fees to consumers no matter what. Then often their own reselling arm is involved in the scalping behavior. The artists aren't reaping these fees. Ticketmaster/livenation is capturing the entirety of the profit and artists don't really have a choice in using a different ticketing vendor in most cases (since it's common for every major venue in a city to have strong-armed exclusivity contracts w/ ticketmaster/livenation).
- Aloisius 2y ago> ultimately charge outrageous fees to consumers By and large, it is the venues and promoters that set large fees. The reason they like TM is because TM will take the blame for charging those fees when in reality, they're kicked back. Of course, the problem is that in many cases now, Live Nation owns the venues and acts as the promoters, so those kickbacks started going, ultimately, to the company charging them.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoMerely being a monopoly is not sufficient to warrant antitrust action.
- fastball 2y agoLive Nation / Ticketmaster is also an excellent example of a bad for consumers monopoly.
- zdragnar 2y agoPardon my ignorance here, as I don't actually attend concerts, but to play something of devil's advocate... Isn't the secondary market for tickets- scalpers and such- significantly more expensive than what Ticketmaster is selling the tickets for? Which is to say, aren't the tickets sold below market value? I'm not entirely clear on how there being more competition would help consumers.
- fastball 2y agoTicketmaster enables "scalping" by offering a secondary market on their own platform. They have a vested interest in this, and due to a lack of real competition they have no reason to realign incentives. Meaningful competitors could do all sorts of things that make a difference in this area. Consumers are also the people running the concerts themselves (performers and whatnot) who have bad experiences with Ticketmaster but don't really have an alternative. Lower fees, non-exclusivity terms, etc.
- lesuorac 2y agoKeep in mind that effectively TM/LN sells tickets on the secondary market. Just because tickets are on the "resale" market doesn't mean they were bought by Jane Doe and she can't go anymore so she's re-listing them. For some concerts only 8% of the tickets are actually available at the listed price, the remaining 92% are all available either as a special offer (credit cards) or given to various individuals associated with the event (such as the headliner) who can then immediately put them up for resale.
- 2y ago
- tootie 2y agoIsn't it an open secret that large venues contracted Ticketmaster expressly to do price fixing? It's collusion as much as monopolism. They run operations and absorb all the bad press.