Checking a company for a monopoly can end badly for Ticketmaster
2022.11.18 14:50
Checking a company for a monopoly can end badly for Ticketmaster
Budrigannews.com – As Taylor Swift fans are known, Swift is the singer’s concert ticket ticketmaster portal crashed and caused a long delay of time.
After waiting for an hour, you will fail to get a ticket only on Nov. 15 Online portals for selected fans, some of which were frequently criticized for the Beverly Hills-based company’s market forces and live entertainment Their wave of frustration was mixed with armchair antitrust analysis. When Ticketmaster decided to cancel the sale of public tickets scheduled for Friday, the company’s condemnation and ridicule grew louder.
This problem is turning into a problem that goes beyond social media chatter. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.Alexander Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.”I’m not going to be able to do that,” he said. The state’s attorney general has vowed to investigate. Klobuchar said Friday that his committee will hold a hearing on Ticketmaster by the end of the year.
Ticketmaster, whose consumer advocates estimate it controls 70% of major ticketing sales, is no stranger to criticism. But the latest storm has resurfaced at a time of heightened antitrust focus among policymakers and a government-wide approach to cracking down on the Biden administration’s anti-competitive practices.
Few expect Ticketmaster, a subsidiary of Live Nation Entertainment (NYSE:), to break up soon. But congressional scrutiny, reactivated public campaigns, and celebrity public protests have led to a likely dissolution ticket that will not go unnoticed by the Justice Department’s antitrust regulators.
“These efforts have given the DOJ a direct line on how these harms are affecting people— not just customers, but artists, competing ticket services, venues, and workers,” said Krista Brown, senior policy analyst at the nonprofit American Economic Freedom Project Antimonopoly. It’s a good idea.
Ticketmaster has disputed claims about its monopoly power. It controls only about 30% of the market for concert ticket sales, according to comments by NPR’s Live Nation Entertainment CFO Joe Berchtold.
“A staggering number of bot attacks, as well as fans who did not have an invitation code, drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4 times our previous peak,” Ticketmaster said in a statement on Thursday. It estimated that 15% of purchase attempts experienced problems.
“Look what you let me do.”
Klobuchar’s letter to the Live Nation lobs a series of questions, conveying concerns about the lack of competition in the ticketing industry. In 2019, she asked the Justice Department to investigate the company.
“The power of Ticketmaster in the major ticket markets usually insulates it from the competitive pressures that companies push to innovate and improve their services,” Klobuchar writes. “It could lead to the kind of dramatic service failure we saw this week, which is what consumers pay the price.”””
The other members of Congress who joined Haranging Ocasio・Cortez were Bill Pascrell (D・N.J.), Bill O’Reilly (D-N.J.), Bill O’Reilly (D-N.J.), Bill O’Reilly (D-N.J.) and Bill O’Reilly (D-N.J.).J.It was Ilhan Omar (D・Minn).and David Cicilline (D-R. et al.
“Ticketmaster is a monopoly and it reminds us every day that any merger with LiveNation should never be approved and needs to be governed,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Tuesday. “Divide them.”
The Justice Department’s antitrust division approved the 2010 Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, despite concerns that the deal would put the independent concert hall out of business and raise prices.
The attorneys general of Tennessee and North Carolina said separately earlier this week that they would consider potential competition and consumer protection issues after receiving complaints.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General also invited consumers to file complaints with his office.
Bloomberg legal analyst Eleanor Tyler said the likelihood of DOJ enforcement based on existing consent orders from the 2010 Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger is “high.”
Justice does not have to do the heavy lifting of bringing new cases, but can instead build on existing statutes, she said. That option would be a faster, less work-intensive approach, Tyler said.
“I think the administration trying to break up the Insta and WhatsApp deal is likely to try to break it up,” Tyler said, referring to an ongoing Federal Trade Commission lawsuit seeking to undo Meta’s acquisition of two social media platforms.
Division is a rare and important government business. However, Live Nation seems to have largely separate Ticketmaster operations, with a focus on ticketing and venue management, Tyler said.
When the DOJ approved the merger, they were not direct competitors and were less closely tied to each other now than if they merged their supply chain and workforce, she said.
A department spokeswoman declined to comment.
‘Blank space’
The public campaign against Ticketmaster stands out for their populist appeal.
The Break-up Ticketmaster Letter Writing campaign, launched last month by advocacy groups including the American Economic Freedom Project, has attracted more than 38,000 letters. More than two-thirds were sent in the days after the sales fiasco earlier this week.
“I continue to be surprised by the revolution in the way the public perceives antitrust law,” said Gwendolyn Cooley, Wisconsin’s assistant Prosecutor for antitrust Law, “something that antitrust law used to obscure and only very erudite people spoke of.” Now we have a popular interest in this area of law.”
Zoey Jordan Salisbury, a student at the University of Seattle Law School, participated in the letter campaign. 15 in her attempt to buy tickets in the advance queue.
“I was trying to buy a ticket, but then I was very angry about antitrust, so now I get angry Swifties about Ticketmaster and write to the Justice Department.””
“I knew you were in trouble.”
The Justice Department approved the 2010 merger. Ticketmaster vowed not to discriminate against venues when it chose not to use the company’s ticketing platform. The merged company also agreed to sell its subsidiaries and license Ticketmaster software to its competitors.
In 2020, the DOJ won a ruling that strengthened the provisions of several consent decrees after Ticketmaster claimed they had repeatedly violated them.
“There is a big problem with antitrust law with behavioral remedies in general,” said Kevin Erickson, future director of the Music Union, participating in the letter campaign “They do not have many resources, are competitors, artists, venues to force or police officers and it is legal to perform this unpaid labor to monitor violations”
Ticketmaster has also quarreled in private lawsuits over its market power, but recent lawsuits have largely failed. Most ended up in arbitration, although at least two are still pending in federal court.
Ericsson said Ticketmaster’s dominance in the major ticket sales market is driving competitors to look for profits in the secondary resale market. But Ticketmaster has a presence there, too, and sometimes releases tickets directly to the secondary market. It can drive prices even more, critics say.
“If you’re a ticketing company that is going to spend a limited development budget to build innovative technology, you will be in an arms race between resellers and technology to protect stuff from the secondary market, because it is mostly closed from the main sales market.”””
