I do, as I enjoy live performances, and have been to NFL games. You can't do the NFL at all without a Ticketmaster account.
Well, Ticketmaster IS a monopoly. And the recent Taylor Swift concert tour debacle is something that our government should look into.
Of course, the GOP-held House only want to investigate Hunter Biden.
But the Dem-held Senate is holding hearings on Ticketmaster. Thank you Democratic Party. Doing something for Americans.
I would suggest solutions to be considered:
- Breaking up the monopoly Ticketmaster has
- Laws restricting scalping
- Laws against the use of bots
- Live Nation blames it largely on bots: From his opening statement to responses to senators' questions, Berchtold stressed the problem of bots and industrial scalping of tickets, which he claims also caused the Swift tickets fiasco.
- Republicans, Democrats, artists and others all appeared to agree Live Nation is the anti-hero: Clyde Lawrence, an artist on the witness panel, explained how the company acts as a promoter, a venue and the ticketing company, which can eat into performing artists' revenues while also escalating ticket price for consumers. Bipartisan agreement on any issue is hard to come by, but as Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal noted, Live Nation managed to bring them all together.
- No easy answers: The ability to resell tickets can be a useful for customers who need to change plans. But it can also help prop up the scalping industry. With that in mind, lawmakers discussed whether restricting the ability to transfer tickets would help. Live Nation was in favor of this, but the CEO of a rival platform, SeatGeek, said this might only entrench Live Nation's dominance, as it holds the kind of market share that would force consumers to solely transact there in the absence of any other resale market option.
- A losing ticket for consumers: When there is less competition in a market, there is lesser incentive for businesses to innovate, experts say Customers pay the price for alleged monopolistic acts with higher ticket prices and fees, lower quality and less choice and less innovation, antitrust expert Kathleen Bradish told lawmakers.