You may have heard of a little company called Ticketmaster. You mave have heard of them because almost anytime you try to buy a concert ticket, you will be dealing with Ticketmaster - usually on their website, these days. An estimated 80 percent of venues in the United States sell their tickets via Ticketmaster, but unfortunately, if I gave you a percentage of Canadian venues, it would be made up completely off the top of my head and less than trustworthy. But let's assume it's similar. Now, you may or may not have heard of Live Nation. It's possible you haven't, but they are the leading concert promoter in America. Essentially, they are responsible for signing contracts with artists, and then booking them into venues across the nation, and getting them all the fancy stuff that famous people ask for...
Here. This is what they do.
So, if you will imagine, Ticketmaster gets the people in the seats and the money to the artists, while Live Nation gets the artists on the stage... and the money to the artists (Cash money!). I don't have a problem with either part of this process occurring, since without it there would be no show. The problem is that Ticketmaster and Live Nation are each absolute giants in their respective industries - everyone who's anyone deals with these two companies. No, that's not the problem. The problem is that they're about to get married.
Or in less romantic terms, they are about to engage in a corporate merger. This deal is worth a lot, and lenders approve. I, however, do not.
A quick refresher on business monopolies: they occur when one company controls such a large share of the industry they are involved with, that other companies cannot compete. This allows said company to direct their prices however they like, and consumers can go you-know-what themselves if they don't like it.
Think about it. If the promoter is in cahoots with the ticket seller, who do you think they'll award the ticket rights to? And do you think the tickets will be sold at bare-bones prices, when there's really no way for the "competition" to compete? And if that wasn't enough... think of the scalping.
You know, when people buy a bunch of concert tickets as soon as they go on sale, and then sell them at a huge mark-up. Well, welcome to the Internet dimension. Now the scalpers can use software that snaps up, say, 500 tickets the second they go on sale on Ticketmaster's website. Then, within seconds, they can have those tickets up for sale on their own, secondary-market website, and people looking to buy tickets will be hard-pressed to find an alternative to this captive market. This would be bad enough if it was limited to eBay and Craigslist. But oh no, the big dogs have their fingers - paws? - in this pot too.
Check out TicketsNow. They offer the tickets you can't find at Ticketmaster, for an increased price. If you dig deep enough, you will find that they are a subsidiary of none other than Ticketmaster. So Ticketmaster sells these tickets to TicketsNow, which sells them again, and the profit all finds its way back home. Ticketmaster is selling those tickets. TWICE.
I apologize for the number of times the word "ticket" has appeared in this post. I'm getting paid a commission for using it. Support the little guys!
So what can we do? Well, we can stop going to concerts that Ticketmaster and/or Live Nation is profiting from. But that eliminates the vast majority of live events in North America, so... Oh! We could buy the tickets and give them away to people who couldn't afford them, as a means of protest. But then, Ticketmaster's already made their money... OH! Tell artists to boycott venues dealing with these two companies. Well, Pearl Jam tried it, but also cancelled their American tour, since that's about the same thing as only playing in places that don't deal with Ticketmaster.
So are we stuck? No. The United States Senate is holding hearings to determine if this merer would breach American anti-trust laws. I really really don't want to investigate their Constitution and find out the Legalese, but they're basically assessing the deal to see if it reeks of monopolization. I can only hope that they do indeed smell that and, with kerchief held over mouth, overturn the decision. Otherwise, be prepared to see even more hiking of ticket prices at Ticketmaster. And don't be surprised if secondary-market concert tickets reach prices in the thousands - or worse.
And if Ticketmaster and Live Nation try to push concertgoers around...
Think about it. If the promoter is in cahoots with the ticket seller, who do you think they'll award the ticket rights to? And do you think the tickets will be sold at bare-bones prices, when there's really no way for the "competition" to compete? And if that wasn't enough... think of the scalping.
You know, when people buy a bunch of concert tickets as soon as they go on sale, and then sell them at a huge mark-up. Well, welcome to the Internet dimension. Now the scalpers can use software that snaps up, say, 500 tickets the second they go on sale on Ticketmaster's website. Then, within seconds, they can have those tickets up for sale on their own, secondary-market website, and people looking to buy tickets will be hard-pressed to find an alternative to this captive market. This would be bad enough if it was limited to eBay and Craigslist. But oh no, the big dogs have their fingers - paws? - in this pot too.
Check out TicketsNow. They offer the tickets you can't find at Ticketmaster, for an increased price. If you dig deep enough, you will find that they are a subsidiary of none other than Ticketmaster. So Ticketmaster sells these tickets to TicketsNow, which sells them again, and the profit all finds its way back home. Ticketmaster is selling those tickets. TWICE.
I apologize for the number of times the word "ticket" has appeared in this post. I'm getting paid a commission for using it. Support the little guys!
So what can we do? Well, we can stop going to concerts that Ticketmaster and/or Live Nation is profiting from. But that eliminates the vast majority of live events in North America, so... Oh! We could buy the tickets and give them away to people who couldn't afford them, as a means of protest. But then, Ticketmaster's already made their money... OH! Tell artists to boycott venues dealing with these two companies. Well, Pearl Jam tried it, but also cancelled their American tour, since that's about the same thing as only playing in places that don't deal with Ticketmaster.
So are we stuck? No. The United States Senate is holding hearings to determine if this merer would breach American anti-trust laws. I really really don't want to investigate their Constitution and find out the Legalese, but they're basically assessing the deal to see if it reeks of monopolization. I can only hope that they do indeed smell that and, with kerchief held over mouth, overturn the decision. Otherwise, be prepared to see even more hiking of ticket prices at Ticketmaster. And don't be surprised if secondary-market concert tickets reach prices in the thousands - or worse.
And if Ticketmaster and Live Nation try to push concertgoers around...
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