Pluralistic: Live Nation/Ticketmaster is buying Congress (30 Apr 2024)
Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Monopolies are intrinsically destabilizing and inevitably implode…eventually. Guessing which of the loathsome monopolies that make us all miserable will be the first domino is a hard call, but Ticketmaster is definitely high on my list.
It's not that event tickets are the most consequential aspect of our lives. The monopolies over pharma, fuel, finance, tech, and even beer are all more important to our day-to-day. But while Ticketmaster – and its many ramified tentacles, like Live Nation – may not be the most destructive monopoly in our world, its monopoly pisses off people with giant megaphones and armies of rabid fans.
It's been a minute since Ticketmaster was last in the news, so let's recap. Ticketmaster bought out most of its ticketing rivals, then merged with Live Nation, the country's largest concert promoter, and bought out many of the country's largest music, stage, and sports venues. They used this iron grip on the entire supply chain for performances and events to pile innumerable junk fees on every ticket sold, while drastically eroding the wages of the creative workers they nominally represented. They created a secret secondary market for tickets and worked with ticket-touts to help them run bots that bought every ticket within an instant of the opening of ticket sales, then ran an auction marketplace that made them gigantic fees on every re-sold ticket – fees the performers were not entitled to share in.
The Ticketmaster/Live Nation/venue octopus is nearly impossible to escape. Independent venues can't book Live Nation acts unless they use Ticketmaster for their tickets. Acts can't get into the large venues owned by Ticketmaster unless they sign up to have Live Nation book their tour. And when Ticketmaster buys a venue, it creams off the most successful acts, starving competing venues of blockbuster shows. They also illegally colluded with their vendors to jack up the price of concerts across the board:
