NY Times: The United States Department of Justice is looking into the operating practices of Ticketmaster and parent Live Nation related to its behavior in the marketplace since the live entertainment giants merged in 2010, according to a New York Times report published on Sunday.
3 comments:
This is a complicated issue that is important to so many people, because affordable ticketing practices allow families and middle class people an ability to be exposed to the arts and to sports. Price gouging unfortunately limits how many games or performances most families of modest means are able to see, so it is important that we work on figuring out a fair and equitable solution. First and foremost a thorough investigation needs to be conducted to determine if indeed there was any wrongdoing on the part of Livenation / Ticketmaster. I suggest opening a regulatory body that ensures a level playing field in the ticketing industry. In all fairness, I wonder if this could constitute an anti-trust lawsuit on behalf of the Federal Government. It seems that Livenation / Ticketmaster effectively has a monopoly over the ticketing industry in the United States, and as such it would be prudent to have them declared a monopoly and the trust broken up into several pieces.
This article shows a problem which on surface, and probably at the core of it, looks like a company managing to obtain monopolistic control in a market through vertical monopoly structure through the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. To say that this surprises me would be horrible false as I remember in my ungraduate Entertainment Economics class reading a case study on the market control that Live Nation has manage to obtain before they even merged with Ticketmaster, and it was a extreme amount compared to the competition in the market. To such a extent that I’m surprised that the merger was allowed. There where conditions to said merger sure but the conditions lose power if when they aren’t enforced which it would seem that the conditions in this merger aren’t being. There article states that Live Nation now basically controls 80 out of 100 of the major venues in the industry the on its face shows that it’s a monopoly, besides it using this fact to squeeze competitors out of the picture. Surprise the entertainment industry has monopolies, I know we are all shocked.
Yes! Price gouging on tickets perpetrated by Ticketmaster and many other ticket whoslesalers and networks is a real problem that I think is actually leading to a decline in the popularity of live music. Many people, including myself, will just not want to deal with the weird hassle of dealing with all the hidden fees, strange workarounds, and honestly downright standoffish customer service at Ticketmaster. Recently, I've found myself wanting to go to a live show of a band that I like, but decided against it when I saw that it was Ticketmaster administering the tickets. Thankfully many of the artists that I follow are a bit on the smaller side and so don't ususally go through the great monolith of ticketmaster but rather through some smaller indie company. On top of all of this, the commission that actual artists get from ticket sales from Ticketmaster are absolutely abysmal. What a horrible profit-making machine.
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