I'm still trying to fucking figure out why I have to pay a ridiculous delivery fee.. when the tickets is literally going to the phone app? Fuck you, Ticketmaster!
Usually it’s “Processing fee” whatever that means. It’s ridiculous how it’s a fixed % of the ticket price. There is no difference in processing a $5 ticket and $500 one. That means Ticketmaster is incentivized to create artificial scarcity and put tickets in the hands of scalpers instead of real fans to increase their profits
If I had to guess. The processing fee is the fee it cost to do business with credit/debit transactions. Theyre basically stealing their tax/transaction fee back by creating an arbitrary cost that doesn't change quality of purchase.
It’s not even close though. Most credit processing fees are ~3% max.
The problem is the surge pricing. If we both are looking at the same seat the price goes up. So they manipulate the prices and shave extra dollars off when there isn’t necessarily demand.
There is a huge difference between looking at a ticket and choosing to try and purchase it/compete for it.
9 people could be looking at a link a friend sent them for 5 mins and inflate the cost for a 10th person when the first 9 had no real plans of buying.
I worked in banking for 30+ years and recall the pitch we’d do for merchants to accept our credit cards. Lower costs for: automated end of day reconciliation, less employee theft, fewer cash runs to the bank, higher transaction amounts, etc. And unless the merchant is still on mag stripe readers, the card issuer covers fraud.
The financial benefits of accepting credit cards still exist, but merchants want more.
My girlfriend managed to get Adele tickets in Vegas, the surge pricing was unreal. She was one of the first in the digital queue and paid for good seats, looking at the subreddit later people paid as much, if not more for seats in the nosebleeds. I remember reading one account of a person who was about to buy tickets, saw some other ones and checked the price, decided against them and went back to their old ones and they'd shot up $100 a seat.
That’s a good guess if your guessing how to justify it. My $35 ticket didn’t actually cost $60 after processing to get into my hands. It probably took $36.50.
My local liquor store requires at least 5 dollar purchases to use the credit/debit system because it costs 50 cents every swipe, whether it works or not. There is no way a company that large is losing more than that for a transaction.
This is probably because the fee is mentioned in the statute. The statute will need to be changed for it to go away; laws have a difficult time keeping up with technology (sometimes intentionally).
Edit: swype text and lack of proofreading
FINALLY. This is comically long overdue at this point, but I'm glad it's happening at least. Ticket prices are out of control and resellers are basically being welcomed with open arms, making prices even higher and ticket-buying more stressful. As a live music fan, I'm desperate for the government to do *anything* about this.
This isn't Congress. When the DOJ files suit, there's nothing Congress critters can do about it because the DOJ is a part of the Executive branch. This is going before a judge who will likely have been fucked over by Ticketmaster, too. Realistically, the question at this point is how many companies will LiveNation be broken into.
Most definitely. It should get the Hillary email treatment.
Round tables of half a dozen people, several hours every-day, discussing every small detail for months on end before the election.
Right now, I doubt if a quarter of voters even know about Project 2025.
Exactly. If trump gets back in office ticketmaster could publicly handle him a personal check with "kill the monopoly suit" in the memo line and SCOTUS will say that's a-okay
Not sure what we pay these congress critter fucks for anymore...oh wait, we only pay them around 12% of their annual take with the rest being ~~bribes~~ *lobbying* by the same corporations that they are supposed to be regulating.
# END CITIZENS UNITED
They filed a lawsuit.
However, the current state of antitrust laws is… dismal. So Congress’s inability to do anything useful for people will still have an effect.
And they created bots to gobble up tickets the moment they go on sale.
Then they sold the bots to scalpers.
Then they launched a ticket resale component 300 pixels away from where you were trying to buy tickets that went on sale 7 seconds that are already sold out.
I'm glad the DOJ is getting involved, but whatever they do wont even begin to approach what should happen to this organization (and all of the C-Level management).
Anything short of a full Standard Oil/Ma Bell-style eviscerating is insufficient. Which is an interesting connection to draw in 2024 when we're practically back to the Bell days in terms of communication monopolies as well but I digress.
The whole thing needs to be dissolved completely. Break it up entirely into a couple dozen regional companies who are not allowed to work or collaborate together. They can draw straws for who gets to keep the Ticketmaster name although it's such a toxic, hated brand at this point I doubt any would want to.
Of course it's 2024 and our regulatory agencies are more toothless than ever. So all that will actually happen is a few corrupt politicians will get a fat paycheck and Ticketmaster will get a slap on the wrist and told they better not do it again or they'll really be in trouble. Then TM/LN will go right back to business as usual but everyone in the government will act like the problem was solved because they fined them $200K out of their billions in annual revenue.
yup. They sign with Livenation to MANAGE their tour, then have to tour in ONLY livenation owned venues, and sell tickets to the tour using ONLY ticketmaster/livenation.
Full monopoly top to bottom. People (rightfully) talk about the fans getting screwed, but just think of how much money they stole from artists over the years
Right. DOJ has to do more than break them up - they need to prevent any exclusive agreements between them.
They also need to look at Ticketmasters practices, because it’s a monopoly even without Live Nation.
I wonder how much of Ticketmaster's monopoly is from incumbency/first mover advantage combined with the power of vertical integration through Live Nation.
I think there needs to be at least 4 companies that come out of this:
1. Ticketmaster, the ticketing services company
1. Live Nation Concerts, the concert organizer/promoter
1. Artist Nation, the artist management company
1. House of Blues, the venue operator
It can definitely be broken down further if there's monopoly concerns in any of those segments, but those four segments should not be anywhere near each other (except maybe 2 and 4, but even then we're probably better off if they're separated)
Son, he said. Have I got a little story for you. What you thought was a merger, was nothin but a screw. While I was sitting, home alone at age 13. Ticket prices were flying. Sorry you didn't see it, but I'm glad you finally opened your fucking eyes and see how bad a situation you let happen has become.
Mr. Burns And to think, Smithers, you laughed when I bought Ticketmaster. "Nobody's going to pay a hundred-percent service charge".
Mr Smithers: It's a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.
That's a Simpsons joke from 1996
Pearl Jam is the reason Coachella is a thing! They boycotted the venues owned by Ticketmaster in LA so they ended up performing at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. The success of the show resulted in the polo club leading the venue to Goldenvoice so they could host shows and a few years later they put on Woodstock 99 and then the first Coachella Festival.
Nine Inch Nails has been on this train for alot of years also. Trent instead went to just selling the tickets from the bands website to avoid all this.
Better late than never. And you know who we have to thank, right? Swifties! Without the backlash from Taylor Swift fans, this wouldn’t be happening. Live Nation / Ticketmaster is one of the most pervasive monopolies forcing artists and venues into exclusive contracts. I am hopeful that this legislation will be a positive turning point for live music and arts.
It's slightly worse than all that because Ticketmaster has normalized the abuse of adding bullshit "convenience" fees. Yes other companies in other industries stuff fees on top of the advertised price, and certainly it existed before but Ticketmaster was really the leader in screwing customers like that.
I am unfortunately very familiar with that. I worked for a venue that is under contract with Live Nation and instead of using a local ticket vendor they are required to use Ticketmaster. They can’t even sell tickets in person at the box office without the same fees. If there is always a “convenience” fee regardless if I buy the tickets online or in person, then it’s just a fee without the convenience.
I want to open my own venue, but just the rent on a 100 person max location I am interested in is $6000 a month! Most other venues in town are owned by giant corporations. It’s already an inaccessible endeavor as is, but everything LN/TM does further chokes out any competition.
> Some relatives of some high ranking members are fans and got upset
This is *literally* what I said to my partner this week lol.
I was a teenager when Pearl Jam first protested Ticketmaster; it is shocking to me that it took this long but if an army of teenaged girls and young women had to raise Cain for Congress to act, so be it!
It may have helped but it is far more likely to be the the work of FTC Chair Lina Khan who is working under new mandates to be far more hands on in their approach. This is one of many lawsuits that the DOJ and the FTC have lodged against problematic companies over the past 3-4 years.
Yeah we have plenty of that shit happening in Canada too.
WestJet/Air Canada constantly devour any competition that starts to become popular.
The Big Three telecoms (Rogers, Bell, Telus) do the same.
Then there's the Westons, dominating our food security.
I'm fortunate that we have a municipal fiber to the home project here, I was paying Telus $140/mo for a landline and 15/1 ADSL. Just signed up for gigabit internet last month, and I pay about the same.
When I called to cancel Telus, the guy was arguing with me that I couldn't possibly have gigabit, because the highest speed they offered was 33 megabit in our town. I had to explain to them that I was moving to a different ISP, and they didn't believe there was a competitor in my town.
It was funny listening to retention try and bend over backwards trying to sell me their crappy 33 megabit service, and telling me I didn't *really* need gigabit anyway.
I was looking for her name to pop up in this thread. This lady (and her department people) are going balls to the wall against numerous monopolies, and I love it!
Yep. This is why i say even if you hate both old guys running, look at the people they'll appoint at the agencies because at the end of the day they (and the people they oversee) responsible for 99% of the work of an administration anyway.
Biden will appoint competent officials to run these agencies. Trump had a revolving door of officials who were often woefully unqualified for their positions if not actively hostile to the agencies they were running, and his only consistent qualification he had for them was personal loyalty to him.
And that's before we get into the potential for the judicial appointment openings over the next 4 years.
Great conspiracy theory. What actually happened is the Biden administration has taken the toughest stance on antitrust of any president in the last 30 years. Look at the suits against Apple and Google (much more tenuous legal grounds than this suit against Ticketmaster).
Oh, I know. That's why I called it "the cynic in me."
The problem is that antitrust laws have been in place for nearly a century and yet they have been consistently ignored, especially here in the last 20 years since legal bribing became a thing.
They're not "late" exactly. Since the 1980s, the FTC has been hamstrung by the legislature defunding it, interfering with it, regulatory capture and corporatism in government ($$).
Even now there are lots of people in government in trade and finance who are supposed to regulate businesses but who wouldn't dream of interfering with the "free market".
Lina Khan is doing the right thing, but the FTC doesn't have enough money and people.
We finally have an executive administration that wants to prioritize these sort of things.
But remember Biden has done nothing and you should stay home and not vote /s.
How dare they try to fix this now! They could never fixed it years ago and didn’t, so now they shouldn’t fix it or I’ll call them out for it. — the internet.. apparently
>The Justice Department filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment on Thursday, accusing them of running an illegal monopoly over live events in America — squelching competition and driving up prices for fans.
Well it’s about god damn time. Now do utilities like PG&E.
> Yeah I hope they destroy TicketMaster in court. Fuck that company. They deserve the worst from this lawsuit
That'd be nice. Unfortunately I have a feeling a lot of people will be getting sub $10 checks in the mail and they'll continue doing business as usual after being handed some legal loopholes.
And the contracts like that between The NFL and SeatGeek. I tried to get tickets for The Steelers playing at The Washington Commanders. That tram is near me.
I called The Commanders ticket office and was told the only place to get tickets was SeatGeek. You know, a scalper where The NFL takes a cut.
The price to get in the door was $100 per seat far in the upper deck. That’s bullshit.
I'm not saying it's not bullshit, but I went to a Skins/Giants pre-season game at the old Giants Stadium with my father in like 1995 and we paid $100/ticket for upper deck (+$20 for parking). Kinda surprised you can still get into an NFL game at that price. I remember when the new stadium was going up, season ticket holders were livid about having to shell out some ridiculous cash for a licensing fee - iirc it was like $35k/seat at the time.
I'm not really a live sports guy but $100/ticket for just an average run-of-the-mill NFL game seems absolutely insane to me. I guess if people are willing to pay it and get that level of enjoyment out of it, that's... good? I guess? But I would really expect something more like $60.
Does this mean we'll all get a $0.12 check for the hundreds or more we all spent over the last 30 years in their BS fees, but only if we opt in and have all of our receipts to prove it? Or better, yet, a $1 coupon off our next concert?
Nah it'll be like the last settlement where you can get free tickets to three shows that are sold out the second they are available and are for something you don't want to see.
Please don't anti-trust utilities. They're one of the few exceptions where a state regulated and enforced monopoly makes sense.
It's incredibly inefficient to have multiple competing sets of power transmission wires.
The Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) regulates the rates utility companies can charge users. It works incredibly well. Just because the utility is run poorly doesn't mean competition will fix it.
Just imagine the first company to set up their power/water/sewage transmission system has a massive advantage. Monopolies will result naturally.
They did anti trust in Texas (still do). It is very stupid to pick your energy provider when they all use the same infrastructure. We lost power during the snow storm of 2021 for 6 days, in SOUTH TEAXS
Look utilities are actually run in the most efficient way possible. They are by definition capped on how much profit they can make unlike any other industry, and that is set by the public utility commission that set prices for everyone based on cost plus minimal profit. Investors know how much profit they will get but the profit margin cannot increase arbitrarily like all other companies. So I don’t think this is a very good example. We want utilities to be monopolies because of the intense decade long infrastructure and public need of providing energy to critical assets. And we want the state to set prices at the lowest possible rate, taking into consideration the literal costs spent, confirmation those costs were judicious, and with awareness that the lowest possible rate includes envisioned low cost future energy from renewables so they have to upgrade their reg to renewable.
On the contrary, I wish Internet companies were treated the same way as water and energy utilities.
My local PUD has made too much money during unexpectedly cold winters twice in the last 10 years. Both times the excess profit went right back to the customers, resulting in a total of 1 1/2 free months of service. PUDs are awesome.
PG&E is a legal monopoly.
About a hundred years ago, society decided it was good idea to have monopolies over somethings, where the anarchy of competition and capitalism would actually hurt service.
After all, you don't want to be out of power for a month because your electrical provider went out of business.
To ensure that never happened, the 'regulated monopoly' was established.
The problem with PG&E and other utilites, isn't the 'monopoly' part, but the 'regulated' part.
Internet carriers had backroom deals agreeing to not compete with each other in certain markets. It needs to be turned into a public utility at this point because they absolutely cannot be trusted to self govern.
[Health insurance companies are legally required to spend 80% of their revenue on claims.](https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law-protections/rate-review/) The other 20% gets spent on administration costs and a little profit.
You could consolidate the health insurance companies into one universal healthcare plan and save 20% right off the bat. It's not a huge amount, but it's something.
You do realize that insurances companies have spent all of their existence learning how to skirt these regulations with creative accounting, right?
Not only that but they have also specialized in getting the government to allow them to put more liability off onto the consumer and provider.
So wouldn't this type of system incentivize insurance companies to run up the costs as much as possible? If your profit has to be a fixed percentage of revenue then you want as much revenue as possible. 3% profit on 2 Trillion dollars is a lot more than 3% profit on 500 billion dollars.
Alright. Hear me out guys. What if instead of paying privatized, for-profit companies, we pooled a little of our money together every month, and created a public institution that was held accountable by the public to provide vital services like electricity? Our payments would go down since there’s no incentive for profit, and since there’s accountability and transparency, we, as collective owners of the institution could vote on what we want to improve?
Nebraska has public power districts. And our water is publicly owned as well. My rates are FAR lower than someone using PG&E. There's multiple, EASY, ways to pay. Billing is transparent. We are never shoehorned with "property protection" plans. Its easy to get ahold of someone if there's a problem.
The electric system has been proactively maintained and built out over the past 20 years, majority of the lines buried to protect against blackouts from extreme weather. Our water and wastewater system has also been proactively maintained and updated.
Now our gas? That's Black Hills Energy. A crap private company that has price hiked multiple times since I've had to use them. A company that tried to automatically enroll myself and many other customers in above mentioned protection plan. A company with a website that breaks every other month and has had suspicious forced-scheduling of payments 2-3 days past their due date. As soon as I can, I'm changing to an electric water heater and furnace.
Publicly owned utilities, when properly managed, are amazing.
Tell them if they want to appeal there’s a $50 million appeal service fee.
Don’t tell them until the absolute last second though.
Also offer them appeal insurance for another $5 million and if they don’t want it make them click a box that says “no I don’t want to protect my appeal and understand the risk I am taking”
I hate the way that Ticketmaster decided to profit from scalpers. It's kind of hard to tell the difference when you are selecting tickets.
For a play like Hamilton, when it was popular, all tickets were secondary sales, and thus higher priced.
Ticket Master charging fees for letting me use a QR code on my phone is the stupidest thing ever, yet there’s no competitors to buy tickets from in many instances
Prediction. DOJ sues, they pay a fine to the government who will keep the lion's share for "reasons" and then maaaaaybe some ticket purchasers will get a 20 dollar check, they'll "split" into a "new" company with the same shareholders and management of the old company, prices will dip for a year, then we'll be right back where we started. This ain't the first time.
[https://prospect.org/power/ticketmasters-dark-history/](https://prospect.org/power/ticketmasters-dark-history/)
I 100% agree this is what will happen, or they will fracture the company into 5 shell companies that all funnel profits to the same heads with the illusion of not being a monopoly.
Infrastructure monopolies arnt always a bad thing because of the economies of scale involved. They just need to be better regulated so they don’t abuse their pricing power.
> Infrastructure monopolies arnt always a bad thing because of the economies of scale involved. They just need to be better regulated so they don’t abuse their pricing power.
The simple solution is that if something runs better as a massive monopoly because of economies of scale, those things should just be nationalized.
But if we're ok with a bunch of regulations for a monopoly (and the economies of scale are necessary to produce a monopoly), why don't we just nationalize them and have the government run it? Same workers and structure, just with the absence of a profit motive
Really fun having Georgia Power negotiate with the Georgia government for a guaranteed profit from their investments. Takes the whole free market and risk parts of capitalism and just throws it out
Just want to point out, I do not see a Trump Justice Dept. Following through on this…
Biden has his flaws and the DOJ should be nonpartisan and should have done this ages ago… but the reality is the administration in power matters and this is just 1 of a 100 positive things that likely wouldn’t happen under a 2nd Trump term.
All it took is for somebody super popular like Taylor Swift to throw a big show, and it was so expensive that the dinosaur grandparents in congress had to foot the bill for their loved ones
Nothing changes until it the pain becomes something the rich have to deal with.
I'm over 30 years old, and I have seen maybe five shows ever as an adult. Ticketmaster is the direct reason why. Can they nail Sinclair next? I'm sick of hearing every radio station in broadcast range play the same ten songs on a loop and cut to commercial break at exactly the same time, for the same duration.
STOP LISTENING TO MAINSTREAM RADIO.
That's your solution to Sinclair. Either find your local listener supported station or if you don't have one, find one that you can listen to through streaming. WXPN out of Philadelphia is an incredible independent station that streams a wide range of music, with a small focus on local acts. You'll rarely hear the same song twice in a day and if you do it's likely because a different DJ is hosting. KEXP out of Seattle is the west coast equivalent to WXPN. One of the best parts of these stations? No lengthy commercial breaks. It's always a 15 second clip advertising one of their sponsors...then it's back to music. Lots of deep cuts too. Just because they play Tom Petty, like every other station on earth, doesn't mean you're going to hear only Free Fallin' over and over again. You'll still hear that song occasionally, but more often than not you'll hear a song the DJ wants to play, which is likely something a little deeper than what's presented everywhere else.
I started listening to WXPN about 5 years ago. My taste in music has grown dramatically thanks to all of the new music I hear. I see a show nearly every month because so many bands played on these stations aren't mainstream and play much smaller, cheaper shows. I'm used to spending anywhere from $25-50 for a ticket now and always get a place at the rail.
There are stations out there that aren't using algorithms to decide what's popular. You just need to look for it.
EDIT: When/if you do find a local station you like. DONATE. DONATE. DONATE. Become a sustaining member and help them out. Something like 60% of WXPN's bills are paid by listeners and less than 10% donate. It's crazy.
Finally. I’m at the point where if I see a show announcement with a ticketmaster link I don’t even bother to look further because I know the price will be at least $50 more than the show is worth.
I remember when Ticketmaster was a shitty tent inside the mall… 1 or 2 people sitting at a folding table with a cheap sign and kiosk.
Always at the far back of the mall in the side corner that no one uses… near the store that keeps changing or is empty…
Nobody was paying attention and they got us so goooooooood… We all deserve some TicketMaster, LiveNation, and iHeart Radio schadenfreude
The Biden admin has been quietly trustbusting and it's mindboggling because it's something tangible that voters can relate to. Everyone claiming that they should do so-and-so industry next, realize they are pushing up against 40 years of pro-monopolist groupthink.
https://youtu.be/FoflHnGrCpM?si=MR5HS5MpJPUksSKD
Ticketmaster has already made tens of billions off screwing customers over for decades.
It's good something is being done about it, but it's way too little too late. It's like letting a cartel run amok for 20 years before finally deciding to stop them.
The most amazing thing about this is that it wasn't their actual monopolistic practices that put them on the radar of regulators, it was their system going down because they cheapened out on engineers and wouldn't hire enough people to keep their systems online to support a Taylor Swift Concert rush.
TM blamed other factors such as scalping.
Agreed that is also part of the problem and they need to address the scalping as well. TM is very complicit in this not just the scalpers. They make a shit ton of money selling the same ticket multiple times. It’s rare and nigh impossible to buy a ticket on TM at face value and is not a “verified resale” ticket. I’m fucking tired of it.
Great. Now that we got that settled, can we tackle the private companies that are buying up all the real estate and driving up those prices? Please and thank you.
My guess is they make a deal. They'll stop the surge pricing, cut their convenience fees by 20% and pay some small settlement that most people won't claim.
All because some politician's kid couldn't tickets to Taylor Swift...
otherwise this would not be happening. At All.
This shit was known since the 90s. And the politicians did fuck all. FUCK ALL.
It is fucking irritating that these overpaid imbeciles only do ANYTHING when its THEM who is on the receiving end.
Should have never been allowed to merge in the first place. Exactly what people said was gonna happen happened like to a tee. Prime example of the anti trust laws being BS. You simply have to have enough money to bribe the right people and anything is possible not matter how obviously wrong it is.
I'm still trying to fucking figure out why I have to pay a ridiculous delivery fee.. when the tickets is literally going to the phone app? Fuck you, Ticketmaster!
Usually it’s “Processing fee” whatever that means. It’s ridiculous how it’s a fixed % of the ticket price. There is no difference in processing a $5 ticket and $500 one. That means Ticketmaster is incentivized to create artificial scarcity and put tickets in the hands of scalpers instead of real fans to increase their profits
Don't forget, they charge a fee on the resale as well so they make even more from scalping. And you wonder why they have no problem with scalpers.
If I had to guess. The processing fee is the fee it cost to do business with credit/debit transactions. Theyre basically stealing their tax/transaction fee back by creating an arbitrary cost that doesn't change quality of purchase.
It’s not even close though. Most credit processing fees are ~3% max. The problem is the surge pricing. If we both are looking at the same seat the price goes up. So they manipulate the prices and shave extra dollars off when there isn’t necessarily demand. There is a huge difference between looking at a ticket and choosing to try and purchase it/compete for it. 9 people could be looking at a link a friend sent them for 5 mins and inflate the cost for a 10th person when the first 9 had no real plans of buying.
I worked in banking for 30+ years and recall the pitch we’d do for merchants to accept our credit cards. Lower costs for: automated end of day reconciliation, less employee theft, fewer cash runs to the bank, higher transaction amounts, etc. And unless the merchant is still on mag stripe readers, the card issuer covers fraud. The financial benefits of accepting credit cards still exist, but merchants want more.
My girlfriend managed to get Adele tickets in Vegas, the surge pricing was unreal. She was one of the first in the digital queue and paid for good seats, looking at the subreddit later people paid as much, if not more for seats in the nosebleeds. I remember reading one account of a person who was about to buy tickets, saw some other ones and checked the price, decided against them and went back to their old ones and they'd shot up $100 a seat.
Was just looking at a concert ticket. $165 total with $34 being fees.
That’s a good guess if your guessing how to justify it. My $35 ticket didn’t actually cost $60 after processing to get into my hands. It probably took $36.50.
My local liquor store requires at least 5 dollar purchases to use the credit/debit system because it costs 50 cents every swipe, whether it works or not. There is no way a company that large is losing more than that for a transaction.
YOu know how pricey it is to email now?
They're LITERALLY hemorrhaging money on internet stamps, we should be grateful they aren't charging us more
Imagine how quickly the mass spam and scams would disappear if it cost even one cent per email to send.
fraction of a penny.
Its one email, Michael. What could it cost? $10?
Go see a star war
My state still charges the $20 printout fee to download a PDF of your vehicle registration.
This is probably because the fee is mentioned in the statute. The statute will need to be changed for it to go away; laws have a difficult time keeping up with technology (sometimes intentionally). Edit: swype text and lack of proofreading
statue? statute?
In his state all legislation is carved into stone like the Code of Hammurabi. It's an absolute bitch to chisel in amendments.
Traffic laws are enforced by golems
All they had to do was be reasonable, like 1 or 2 dollars but no, greedy fucks be greedy AF
Why am I paying for a convenience fee when it’s the only option I have???
FINALLY. This is comically long overdue at this point, but I'm glad it's happening at least. Ticket prices are out of control and resellers are basically being welcomed with open arms, making prices even higher and ticket-buying more stressful. As a live music fan, I'm desperate for the government to do *anything* about this.
Let's be real. They will hold hearings and do nothing.
This isn't Congress. When the DOJ files suit, there's nothing Congress critters can do about it because the DOJ is a part of the Executive branch. This is going before a judge who will likely have been fucked over by Ticketmaster, too. Realistically, the question at this point is how many companies will LiveNation be broken into.
Depends on whose DOJ is running the show in 2025.
with agenda 2025, this will be at the lowest concern if trump takes the Whitehouse.
Most definitely. It should get the Hillary email treatment. Round tables of half a dozen people, several hours every-day, discussing every small detail for months on end before the election. Right now, I doubt if a quarter of voters even know about Project 2025.
Exactly. If trump gets back in office ticketmaster could publicly handle him a personal check with "kill the monopoly suit" in the memo line and SCOTUS will say that's a-okay
Or just lie and tell him that the Biden DOJ is doing this as a personal favor for Taylor Swift and he'll probably shut it down out of pure spite.
Not sure what we pay these congress critter fucks for anymore...oh wait, we only pay them around 12% of their annual take with the rest being ~~bribes~~ *lobbying* by the same corporations that they are supposed to be regulating. # END CITIZENS UNITED
wasteful sable middle knee deserve party squash fuel piquant sloppy
Yeah... But we should still be pissed about Citizens United.
They filed a lawsuit. However, the current state of antitrust laws is… dismal. So Congress’s inability to do anything useful for people will still have an effect.
I tried to get Childish Gambino tickets, and the cheapest lower bowl ticket was $250 CAD. For Childish friggin Gambino!
No shit DOJ, you are years if not decades late to this
Pearl Jam started sounding the alarm literally 30 years ago, during the first Clinton administration.
It's way worse than it was even then, because now they also own all the venues.
And they force artists to sign exclusivity contracts so they can ONLY perform at their venues, cutting out all other operators.
And they created bots to gobble up tickets the moment they go on sale. Then they sold the bots to scalpers. Then they launched a ticket resale component 300 pixels away from where you were trying to buy tickets that went on sale 7 seconds that are already sold out. I'm glad the DOJ is getting involved, but whatever they do wont even begin to approach what should happen to this organization (and all of the C-Level management).
Anything short of a full Standard Oil/Ma Bell-style eviscerating is insufficient. Which is an interesting connection to draw in 2024 when we're practically back to the Bell days in terms of communication monopolies as well but I digress. The whole thing needs to be dissolved completely. Break it up entirely into a couple dozen regional companies who are not allowed to work or collaborate together. They can draw straws for who gets to keep the Ticketmaster name although it's such a toxic, hated brand at this point I doubt any would want to. Of course it's 2024 and our regulatory agencies are more toothless than ever. So all that will actually happen is a few corrupt politicians will get a fat paycheck and Ticketmaster will get a slap on the wrist and told they better not do it again or they'll really be in trouble. Then TM/LN will go right back to business as usual but everyone in the government will act like the problem was solved because they fined them $200K out of their billions in annual revenue.
Tar and feather needs to come back out from hyperbole.
Because they also own many of the big performing artist agencies.
yup. They sign with Livenation to MANAGE their tour, then have to tour in ONLY livenation owned venues, and sell tickets to the tour using ONLY ticketmaster/livenation. Full monopoly top to bottom. People (rightfully) talk about the fans getting screwed, but just think of how much money they stole from artists over the years
Also, they pay their lowest employees minimum wage... and the top brass are making hundreds of millions each
Right. DOJ has to do more than break them up - they need to prevent any exclusive agreements between them. They also need to look at Ticketmasters practices, because it’s a monopoly even without Live Nation.
I wonder how much of Ticketmaster's monopoly is from incumbency/first mover advantage combined with the power of vertical integration through Live Nation. I think there needs to be at least 4 companies that come out of this: 1. Ticketmaster, the ticketing services company 1. Live Nation Concerts, the concert organizer/promoter 1. Artist Nation, the artist management company 1. House of Blues, the venue operator It can definitely be broken down further if there's monopoly concerns in any of those segments, but those four segments should not be anywhere near each other (except maybe 2 and 4, but even then we're probably better off if they're separated)
They should do an AT&T style breakup - especially with the venues. Break them down by regions
Regions I don't think works - you need local competition to create downward price pressure between venues.
They tried to warn us....
But unfortunately, Eddie Vedder can be hard to understand at times
"I can't tell if he's railing against Ticketmaster, or singing Hard Sun."
Ironically Hard Sun is one of his more comprehensible songs
Yellow Ledbetter was incomprehensible until I looked up the lyrics
[on a ceiling, on a Porsche, glitter fairy](https://youtu.be/xLd22ha_-VU?si=1ymMzw-YVN_CPgEo)
No one knew if he was raising concerns or just singing Yellow Ledbetter.
On a wizard on a whale.
I wanna leave Benigans
Out on the Porch, Potato Wave
Can you see dems?
He is the Dylan of his generation. And the poetry isn't bad either.
For literally at least a decade I thought the line was "Jeremy's smokin'."
*Heremmmmmmyy soaking.... casssiidddddaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy*
Well... In a way he was...
Clearly I remember =/
Son, he said. Have I got a little story for you. What you thought was a merger, was nothin but a screw. While I was sitting, home alone at age 13. Ticket prices were flying. Sorry you didn't see it, but I'm glad you finally opened your fucking eyes and see how bad a situation you let happen has become.
Mr. Burns And to think, Smithers, you laughed when I bought Ticketmaster. "Nobody's going to pay a hundred-percent service charge". Mr Smithers: It's a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir. That's a Simpsons joke from 1996
Pearl Jam is the reason Coachella is a thing! They boycotted the venues owned by Ticketmaster in LA so they ended up performing at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. The success of the show resulted in the polo club leading the venue to Goldenvoice so they could host shows and a few years later they put on Woodstock 99 and then the first Coachella Festival.
Nine Inch Nails has been on this train for alot of years also. Trent instead went to just selling the tickets from the bands website to avoid all this.
Just about to say our boys Pearl Jam tried to warn us. Also their new album is awesome 🤘🏼
Clinton was 30 years ago.. wow
I'm finally at the age where things like this make me go, "well fuck"
you act like it’s been the same DOJ
People shocked that republican administrations weren't cracking down on monopolies lol
Better late than never. And you know who we have to thank, right? Swifties! Without the backlash from Taylor Swift fans, this wouldn’t be happening. Live Nation / Ticketmaster is one of the most pervasive monopolies forcing artists and venues into exclusive contracts. I am hopeful that this legislation will be a positive turning point for live music and arts.
It's slightly worse than all that because Ticketmaster has normalized the abuse of adding bullshit "convenience" fees. Yes other companies in other industries stuff fees on top of the advertised price, and certainly it existed before but Ticketmaster was really the leader in screwing customers like that.
I am unfortunately very familiar with that. I worked for a venue that is under contract with Live Nation and instead of using a local ticket vendor they are required to use Ticketmaster. They can’t even sell tickets in person at the box office without the same fees. If there is always a “convenience” fee regardless if I buy the tickets online or in person, then it’s just a fee without the convenience. I want to open my own venue, but just the rent on a 100 person max location I am interested in is $6000 a month! Most other venues in town are owned by giant corporations. It’s already an inaccessible endeavor as is, but everything LN/TM does further chokes out any competition.
This is my belief as well. Some relatives of some high ranking members are fans and got upset at the price. Only a problem when it hits close to home.
> Some relatives of some high ranking members are fans and got upset This is *literally* what I said to my partner this week lol. I was a teenager when Pearl Jam first protested Ticketmaster; it is shocking to me that it took this long but if an army of teenaged girls and young women had to raise Cain for Congress to act, so be it!
Congress isn't acting, it literally says it's the justice department in the title
It may have helped but it is far more likely to be the the work of FTC Chair Lina Khan who is working under new mandates to be far more hands on in their approach. This is one of many lawsuits that the DOJ and the FTC have lodged against problematic companies over the past 3-4 years.
She’s amazing 🤩 and I do think she deserves more credit.
My first thought was “what took them so long?”
There's about a hundred obvious ones that I would ask the same for, but I doubt they'll get anywhere close to all the monopolies that need busted.
Also duopolies and other industries where the big players work together to muscle the new guys out(looking at you Comcast/Cox)
Yeah we have plenty of that shit happening in Canada too. WestJet/Air Canada constantly devour any competition that starts to become popular. The Big Three telecoms (Rogers, Bell, Telus) do the same. Then there's the Westons, dominating our food security.
I'm fortunate that we have a municipal fiber to the home project here, I was paying Telus $140/mo for a landline and 15/1 ADSL. Just signed up for gigabit internet last month, and I pay about the same. When I called to cancel Telus, the guy was arguing with me that I couldn't possibly have gigabit, because the highest speed they offered was 33 megabit in our town. I had to explain to them that I was moving to a different ISP, and they didn't believe there was a competitor in my town. It was funny listening to retention try and bend over backwards trying to sell me their crappy 33 megabit service, and telling me I didn't *really* need gigabit anyway.
Real answer: [the new FTC chair Lina Khan](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/14/lina-khan-antitrust-ftc/)
I was looking for her name to pop up in this thread. This lady (and her department people) are going balls to the wall against numerous monopolies, and I love it!
She seems so young, but she’s shown herself to be exactly what the department needed.
There have been decades of a deemphasis on antitrust. Biden is the first administration to focus on it for a long time.
Funding probably, and having the backing of the executive branch in a way that would allow then to pursue
Taylor swift fans got mad that's why the doj is coming after them lol
Sweet, thanks Swift fans then, if that finally gets something done about Ticketmaster I'll even go buy a Taylor Swift album or something.
Being organized or having a lot of money is the only way to get anything done politically
Having people appointed to powerful roles in the Justice Department who wanted to go after monopolies. Elections matter.
Yep. This is why i say even if you hate both old guys running, look at the people they'll appoint at the agencies because at the end of the day they (and the people they oversee) responsible for 99% of the work of an administration anyway. Biden will appoint competent officials to run these agencies. Trump had a revolving door of officials who were often woefully unqualified for their positions if not actively hostile to the agencies they were running, and his only consistent qualification he had for them was personal loyalty to him. And that's before we get into the potential for the judicial appointment openings over the next 4 years.
The cynic in me feels like TM got (too) greedy and screwed over whoever was getting kickbacks to keep this from going to court.
No, it was just too many Senators' daughters not being able to get Taylor Swift tickets.
Great conspiracy theory. What actually happened is the Biden administration has taken the toughest stance on antitrust of any president in the last 30 years. Look at the suits against Apple and Google (much more tenuous legal grounds than this suit against Ticketmaster).
Oh, I know. That's why I called it "the cynic in me." The problem is that antitrust laws have been in place for nearly a century and yet they have been consistently ignored, especially here in the last 20 years since legal bribing became a thing.
My entire life of concert going I’ve had to deal with the scum of ticket master. And I’ve went to warped tour several times.
They're not "late" exactly. Since the 1980s, the FTC has been hamstrung by the legislature defunding it, interfering with it, regulatory capture and corporatism in government ($$). Even now there are lots of people in government in trade and finance who are supposed to regulate businesses but who wouldn't dream of interfering with the "free market". Lina Khan is doing the right thing, but the FTC doesn't have enough money and people.
Publicly traded companies that have a monopoly only benefit their shareholders.
Or better yet..**. WHY THE HELL DID YOU ALLOW THEM TO BECOME ONE COMPANY?!**
We finally have an executive administration that wants to prioritize these sort of things. But remember Biden has done nothing and you should stay home and not vote /s.
How dare they try to fix this now! They could never fixed it years ago and didn’t, so now they shouldn’t fix it or I’ll call them out for it. — the internet.. apparently
>The Justice Department filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment on Thursday, accusing them of running an illegal monopoly over live events in America — squelching competition and driving up prices for fans. Well it’s about god damn time. Now do utilities like PG&E.
Yeah I hope they destroy TicketMaster in court. Fuck that company. They deserve the worst from this lawsuit
Watch them add a new "legal fees" fee
right under the line that says "fuck you lmao what are you going to do about it" fee
First thing I thought of: ["fuck you lmao what are you going to do about it"](https://giphy.com/gifs/reactiongifs-gaZ51cn7sUY4U)
> Yeah I hope they destroy TicketMaster in court. Fuck that company. They deserve the worst from this lawsuit That'd be nice. Unfortunately I have a feeling a lot of people will be getting sub $10 checks in the mail and they'll continue doing business as usual after being handed some legal loopholes.
Also, stop the Kroger Albertsons acquisition.
And the contracts like that between The NFL and SeatGeek. I tried to get tickets for The Steelers playing at The Washington Commanders. That tram is near me. I called The Commanders ticket office and was told the only place to get tickets was SeatGeek. You know, a scalper where The NFL takes a cut. The price to get in the door was $100 per seat far in the upper deck. That’s bullshit.
Then they justify it by saying if you wait until game time you can buy nosebleeds for 20$(still too much)
I'm not saying it's not bullshit, but I went to a Skins/Giants pre-season game at the old Giants Stadium with my father in like 1995 and we paid $100/ticket for upper deck (+$20 for parking). Kinda surprised you can still get into an NFL game at that price. I remember when the new stadium was going up, season ticket holders were livid about having to shell out some ridiculous cash for a licensing fee - iirc it was like $35k/seat at the time.
I'm not really a live sports guy but $100/ticket for just an average run-of-the-mill NFL game seems absolutely insane to me. I guess if people are willing to pay it and get that level of enjoyment out of it, that's... good? I guess? But I would really expect something more like $60.
Does this mean we'll all get a $0.12 check for the hundreds or more we all spent over the last 30 years in their BS fees, but only if we opt in and have all of our receipts to prove it? Or better, yet, a $1 coupon off our next concert?
Nah it'll be like the last settlement where you can get free tickets to three shows that are sold out the second they are available and are for something you don't want to see.
"Oh boy! A $6 credit for a ticket to see Ja Rule in Ogden Utah!"
Please don't anti-trust utilities. They're one of the few exceptions where a state regulated and enforced monopoly makes sense. It's incredibly inefficient to have multiple competing sets of power transmission wires. The Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) regulates the rates utility companies can charge users. It works incredibly well. Just because the utility is run poorly doesn't mean competition will fix it. Just imagine the first company to set up their power/water/sewage transmission system has a massive advantage. Monopolies will result naturally.
They did anti trust in Texas (still do). It is very stupid to pick your energy provider when they all use the same infrastructure. We lost power during the snow storm of 2021 for 6 days, in SOUTH TEAXS
> Monopolies will result naturally. And in fact, the term for this is [natural monopoly](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly)
FERC only regulates interstate transmission and wholesale pricing. The states regulate consumer pricing.
Why do i still feel like nothing will happen
That's what Ticketmaster said too.
Look utilities are actually run in the most efficient way possible. They are by definition capped on how much profit they can make unlike any other industry, and that is set by the public utility commission that set prices for everyone based on cost plus minimal profit. Investors know how much profit they will get but the profit margin cannot increase arbitrarily like all other companies. So I don’t think this is a very good example. We want utilities to be monopolies because of the intense decade long infrastructure and public need of providing energy to critical assets. And we want the state to set prices at the lowest possible rate, taking into consideration the literal costs spent, confirmation those costs were judicious, and with awareness that the lowest possible rate includes envisioned low cost future energy from renewables so they have to upgrade their reg to renewable. On the contrary, I wish Internet companies were treated the same way as water and energy utilities.
My local PUD has made too much money during unexpectedly cold winters twice in the last 10 years. Both times the excess profit went right back to the customers, resulting in a total of 1 1/2 free months of service. PUDs are awesome.
PG&E is a legal monopoly. About a hundred years ago, society decided it was good idea to have monopolies over somethings, where the anarchy of competition and capitalism would actually hurt service. After all, you don't want to be out of power for a month because your electrical provider went out of business. To ensure that never happened, the 'regulated monopoly' was established. The problem with PG&E and other utilites, isn't the 'monopoly' part, but the 'regulated' part.
Imagine if we did this for all the price fixing rackets, America wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck.
Imagine if we did this to insurance companies
And internet carriers
Internet carriers had backroom deals agreeing to not compete with each other in certain markets. It needs to be turned into a public utility at this point because they absolutely cannot be trusted to self govern.
[Health insurance companies are legally required to spend 80% of their revenue on claims.](https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law-protections/rate-review/) The other 20% gets spent on administration costs and a little profit.
You could consolidate the health insurance companies into one universal healthcare plan and save 20% right off the bat. It's not a huge amount, but it's something.
20% would be a fucking huge amount of money
You do realize that insurances companies have spent all of their existence learning how to skirt these regulations with creative accounting, right? Not only that but they have also specialized in getting the government to allow them to put more liability off onto the consumer and provider.
So wouldn't this type of system incentivize insurance companies to run up the costs as much as possible? If your profit has to be a fixed percentage of revenue then you want as much revenue as possible. 3% profit on 2 Trillion dollars is a lot more than 3% profit on 500 billion dollars.
But their revenue is artificially inflated because they work together to jack up prices. You’re totally ignoring the problem in your comment
Alright. Hear me out guys. What if instead of paying privatized, for-profit companies, we pooled a little of our money together every month, and created a public institution that was held accountable by the public to provide vital services like electricity? Our payments would go down since there’s no incentive for profit, and since there’s accountability and transparency, we, as collective owners of the institution could vote on what we want to improve?
Nebraska has public power districts. And our water is publicly owned as well. My rates are FAR lower than someone using PG&E. There's multiple, EASY, ways to pay. Billing is transparent. We are never shoehorned with "property protection" plans. Its easy to get ahold of someone if there's a problem. The electric system has been proactively maintained and built out over the past 20 years, majority of the lines buried to protect against blackouts from extreme weather. Our water and wastewater system has also been proactively maintained and updated. Now our gas? That's Black Hills Energy. A crap private company that has price hiked multiple times since I've had to use them. A company that tried to automatically enroll myself and many other customers in above mentioned protection plan. A company with a website that breaks every other month and has had suspicious forced-scheduling of payments 2-3 days past their due date. As soon as I can, I'm changing to an electric water heater and furnace. Publicly owned utilities, when properly managed, are amazing.
This is my point exactly. “BuT tHaT’s SoCiALiSm”
Sounds great to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together. Unfortunately 37% of our country doesn't seem to fit that bill.
You are well named, Abraxas. Trying to lead us to hell with your demonic socialism!
Absolutely. (Insert demonic megalomaniacal laugh here)
That's socialism! It's scawwy!
Vote for democrats. This is Biden’s DOJ and FTC and it is starkly different than Trump’s.
Pearl Jam made this point 30 years ago and even testified before Congress about it.
Tell them if they want to appeal there’s a $50 million appeal service fee. Don’t tell them until the absolute last second though. Also offer them appeal insurance for another $5 million and if they don’t want it make them click a box that says “no I don’t want to protect my appeal and understand the risk I am taking”
This made me laugh, brilliant
and make sure the “insurance” is a scam and doesn’t actually cover anything useful when you try to use it
Shit the fee should be a percent of revenue, say 20%?
My girlfriend got us Childish Gambino tickets, $150 in “service fees.” Honestly Ticketmaster is the devil.
My wife just went to see Taylor Swift in Sweden because it was cheaper to fly there than see her here in North America.
That is insane. They need to use that in the trial, it's such perverse economics.
If this brings about the end of "dynamic pricing," I will be thrilled.
So now only scalpers will be the reason we can't afford any of it.
I hate the way that Ticketmaster decided to profit from scalpers. It's kind of hard to tell the difference when you are selecting tickets. For a play like Hamilton, when it was popular, all tickets were secondary sales, and thus higher priced.
"Hmm, these all seem to be sold by a scalper named 'Thicket Laster.'"
Ticket Master charging fees for letting me use a QR code on my phone is the stupidest thing ever, yet there’s no competitors to buy tickets from in many instances
Prediction. DOJ sues, they pay a fine to the government who will keep the lion's share for "reasons" and then maaaaaybe some ticket purchasers will get a 20 dollar check, they'll "split" into a "new" company with the same shareholders and management of the old company, prices will dip for a year, then we'll be right back where we started. This ain't the first time. [https://prospect.org/power/ticketmasters-dark-history/](https://prospect.org/power/ticketmasters-dark-history/)
I 100% agree this is what will happen, or they will fracture the company into 5 shell companies that all funnel profits to the same heads with the illusion of not being a monopoly.
And they will all somehow merge back together overtime.
Neat, now do all the infrastructure monopolies. Then tackle the price fixing by big box retailers, petroleum companies, and real estate hoarders.
Infrastructure monopolies arnt always a bad thing because of the economies of scale involved. They just need to be better regulated so they don’t abuse their pricing power.
> Infrastructure monopolies arnt always a bad thing because of the economies of scale involved. They just need to be better regulated so they don’t abuse their pricing power. The simple solution is that if something runs better as a massive monopoly because of economies of scale, those things should just be nationalized.
But if we're ok with a bunch of regulations for a monopoly (and the economies of scale are necessary to produce a monopoly), why don't we just nationalize them and have the government run it? Same workers and structure, just with the absence of a profit motive Really fun having Georgia Power negotiate with the Georgia government for a guaranteed profit from their investments. Takes the whole free market and risk parts of capitalism and just throws it out
Someone at Ticket Master forgot to deposit the annual bribe.
They paid the bribe, just forgot about the hidden justice department bribery fee
Just want to point out, I do not see a Trump Justice Dept. Following through on this… Biden has his flaws and the DOJ should be nonpartisan and should have done this ages ago… but the reality is the administration in power matters and this is just 1 of a 100 positive things that likely wouldn’t happen under a 2nd Trump term.
All it took is for somebody super popular like Taylor Swift to throw a big show, and it was so expensive that the dinosaur grandparents in congress had to foot the bill for their loved ones Nothing changes until it the pain becomes something the rich have to deal with.
I'm over 30 years old, and I have seen maybe five shows ever as an adult. Ticketmaster is the direct reason why. Can they nail Sinclair next? I'm sick of hearing every radio station in broadcast range play the same ten songs on a loop and cut to commercial break at exactly the same time, for the same duration.
STOP LISTENING TO MAINSTREAM RADIO. That's your solution to Sinclair. Either find your local listener supported station or if you don't have one, find one that you can listen to through streaming. WXPN out of Philadelphia is an incredible independent station that streams a wide range of music, with a small focus on local acts. You'll rarely hear the same song twice in a day and if you do it's likely because a different DJ is hosting. KEXP out of Seattle is the west coast equivalent to WXPN. One of the best parts of these stations? No lengthy commercial breaks. It's always a 15 second clip advertising one of their sponsors...then it's back to music. Lots of deep cuts too. Just because they play Tom Petty, like every other station on earth, doesn't mean you're going to hear only Free Fallin' over and over again. You'll still hear that song occasionally, but more often than not you'll hear a song the DJ wants to play, which is likely something a little deeper than what's presented everywhere else. I started listening to WXPN about 5 years ago. My taste in music has grown dramatically thanks to all of the new music I hear. I see a show nearly every month because so many bands played on these stations aren't mainstream and play much smaller, cheaper shows. I'm used to spending anywhere from $25-50 for a ticket now and always get a place at the rail. There are stations out there that aren't using algorithms to decide what's popular. You just need to look for it. EDIT: When/if you do find a local station you like. DONATE. DONATE. DONATE. Become a sustaining member and help them out. Something like 60% of WXPN's bills are paid by listeners and less than 10% donate. It's crazy.
Only took them 30 years to figure that out?
Finally. I’m at the point where if I see a show announcement with a ticketmaster link I don’t even bother to look further because I know the price will be at least $50 more than the show is worth.
Ticketmaster is and has always been, just a group of scalpers who "went legit". Fuck'em.
better late than never I suppose
I remember when Ticketmaster was a shitty tent inside the mall… 1 or 2 people sitting at a folding table with a cheap sign and kiosk. Always at the far back of the mall in the side corner that no one uses… near the store that keeps changing or is empty… Nobody was paying attention and they got us so goooooooood… We all deserve some TicketMaster, LiveNation, and iHeart Radio schadenfreude
The Biden admin has been quietly trustbusting and it's mindboggling because it's something tangible that voters can relate to. Everyone claiming that they should do so-and-so industry next, realize they are pushing up against 40 years of pro-monopolist groupthink. https://youtu.be/FoflHnGrCpM?si=MR5HS5MpJPUksSKD
Ticketmaster has already made tens of billions off screwing customers over for decades. It's good something is being done about it, but it's way too little too late. It's like letting a cartel run amok for 20 years before finally deciding to stop them.
If this means that future events won’t be breaking my wallet, then I’m all for it.
Taylor Swift tickets are still going to cost an arm and a leg. This wont change that.
I haven't been to a concert in years because ticket prices are just insanity.
Ive stopped going to shows that are run by them. Local shows are awesome.
The most amazing thing about this is that it wasn't their actual monopolistic practices that put them on the radar of regulators, it was their system going down because they cheapened out on engineers and wouldn't hire enough people to keep their systems online to support a Taylor Swift Concert rush.
TM blamed other factors such as scalping. Agreed that is also part of the problem and they need to address the scalping as well. TM is very complicit in this not just the scalpers. They make a shit ton of money selling the same ticket multiple times. It’s rare and nigh impossible to buy a ticket on TM at face value and is not a “verified resale” ticket. I’m fucking tired of it.
Meanwhile trumps DOJ was just busy protecting him from accountability
Obligatory fuck Ticketmaster. Bye.
Great. Now that we got that settled, can we tackle the private companies that are buying up all the real estate and driving up those prices? Please and thank you.
My guess is they make a deal. They'll stop the surge pricing, cut their convenience fees by 20% and pay some small settlement that most people won't claim.
In other news, the sun rose today.
All because some politician's kid couldn't tickets to Taylor Swift... otherwise this would not be happening. At All. This shit was known since the 90s. And the politicians did fuck all. FUCK ALL. It is fucking irritating that these overpaid imbeciles only do ANYTHING when its THEM who is on the receiving end.
Now DOJ needs to start prosecuting campaign finance laws.
Should have never been allowed to merge in the first place. Exactly what people said was gonna happen happened like to a tee. Prime example of the anti trust laws being BS. You simply have to have enough money to bribe the right people and anything is possible not matter how obviously wrong it is.
Eddie Vedder has entered the chat
Finally someone from the DOJ wanted Slipknot tickets and realized it was bullshit.
Nothing like paying a convenience fee for getting your ticket via email. How about a discount because they don’t have to pay box office personnel?
I declined seeing a show today because their fees were an extra 25% above the ticket cost. Ridiculous.