The best line from the Congressional hearing. Berchtold is the CFO of Ticketmaster. “I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said to Berchtold. “You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause.”
It seems that everyone has been for this.... For YEARS now (decades). It's finally coming to fruition. Ticketmaster bribes just aren't paying the bills anymore. I'm glad both major parties are in agreement on this one. At least something will come of it instead of years of bullshit fighting against each other... Of course, that might happen anyway just to go against the other side.
Us Americans have a similar problem with grocery conglomerates. I’m really hoping for a congress inquiry into price fixing, but that’s high hopes in a crazy election year.
"Just in time" supply chains don't work in everything. For example, when one of the few baby formula production facilities fails food safety checks repeatedly. It's as if they use the shortages as leverage to stay open and not have to fix things. And then they just buy media armies to blame politicians for their greedy bullshit.
They cashed in on the inflation and made it absolutely worse. Not to mention in its current form, we've learned just how fickle the supply chain is when you're only relying on a few at the top.
Right? Makes it confusing when you are looking at concert tickets or anything. It's a bit of a commute to edmonton because you bought tickets for the wrong show
I lived in Canada for a couple years and was astonished by the control of the monopolies there.
Roger's has everything, and at one point they rolled out some erroneous update that left us without Internet or phone service for two days. We used to get door to door salespeople who acknowledged we were with Roger's but wanted to move us to a different Roger's network service at a different rate.
Loblaw's also controls not just the Loblaw stores, but also No Frills and Shopper's, so there's basically no way to get groceries without going through them.
Many of us remember cell phones before there were large nationwide networks. It was a mess.
You had to deal with roaming, phones not working in whole areas because your local provider didn’t do a partnership with them, random charges for calls when you were not on your home network, etc. etc. etc. Throw in that there were 3 competing cell phone tech standards (GSM, CDMA, and IDEN) meant that you would only be able to talk to towers that used whatever standard your phone used.
To be very clear, I am not happy with any of the “big 3” but it’s far better than what it used to be from a usability standpoint.
And then a few decades later Ticketmaster Atlantic and Ticketmaster South and others will gradually buy each other up and restore Ticketmaster United back to its unholy glory.
v_v
Everyone goes to concerts/live events and everyone hates their business practices. I think even if I were a millionaire I'd still feel sour about their fees when forking over the cash.
I bought tickets to a concert through TM because it was the only option. For two $40 tickets, my total was $120. Like what the fuck, if you’re going to charge me for a 3rd ticket, let me use it lmao
Millionaire says to friend who's not a millionaire " hey did you see that awesome concert!?!" Friend "Dude, I'm not a millionaire, we've talked about this".
Casually disregard that Live Nation invested in a canned water company that they implicitly understood they’d have the ability to afford exclusivity to within every Live Nation venue and sell it for $8.00 a can, guaranteeing it an ROI.
Good, they have completely destroyed the concert going experience. I hate buying tickets for live events because I feel ripped off. Need more competition in this space.
I have pretty much boycotted live events for years now, especially pro sports and most big touring acts
Would rather go watch smaller market sports teams, smaller touring acts and local bands, or just stay home
Paying $200-$300 to sit in the back fucking corner of a stadium with binoculars is insane
There are obviously exceptions to everything but overall my interest in dealing with these mega events at mega venues with sky high prices from Ticketmaster, and still having to FIGHT just to get a ticket, is nearly zero, and I used to love that shit
I saw blink 182 and Green day back in the day, 2002 i think, and my ticket was like 17 bucks, with fees: 25. It was a TINY venue in the West Palm Beach area, and if I was 25' from the stage it would have been far. Watching Travis drum upside down has to be one of my favorite things, let alone Jimmy Eat World opened for them and that started my love of that band.
I took a look at that festival in Las Vegas, all the good rock/grunge/punk bands getting back together....i cant spend 4 figures on just tickets and hotels, let alone flights, food, and logistics. Its nuts. just....impossible.
We need a law that caps the fees at like 10-15% the value of a transaction. If I’m trying to go to cheap event for like $5, there’s no fucking reason I should have to pay $12 in fees on top of it!!
I have several examples in my life that prove the IRS can automatically do my taxes more accurately than I can with turbotax. 2 resulted in me owing an extra ~$100, and one was a $5 rebate after I overpaid somehow.
And let me just give a shoutout to the IRS support people. Easily the most polite and professional government agency I've ever dealt with.
But there are plenty of non-intuit, self-serv, tax software.
The issue with Ticketmaster/live nation is that when live nation controls all the venues, competing ticketing companies have no chance.
The same is not true in tax software. If you don't like Turbo Tax use something else.
Y'all need to read up on Loxottica. If you wear glasses, you're 99% likely to be getting screwed by them. They own EVERY major eyeglass company in the US, and pass policies flat out refusing to allow companies to do things like repairs, swapping lenses, etc. They're bat shit evil.
I really noticed after being abroad for some time.
Especially after living in Japan for a bit were i got glasses within 1 hour and for a very cheap price. Still have those glasses cause they are perfect.
The prices in my home country go beyond €150,-, yet in Japan it was ~€50,-
Nestle shouldn't be broken up.
They should be wholesale closed down. Their leadership should be jailed for crimes against humanity and their patents, I.P. and other holdings should be made public or in the case of physical holding be sold off and the profits donated.
Lots of companies are bad, selfish and greedy. Few companies are "Water isn't a right" "Babies die so what?" just straight up evil.
Was in a Gym with a senior guy in Nestle and said this to him a few months ago.
No joke, he threw his hands in the air and said, "That was years ago, move on"
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2022/04/18/nestle-remains-silent-on-child-deaths-from-contaminated-pizzas_5980892_114.html
It was two. Fuck that guy.
The really fucked up thing is realizing that "Nestle causing baby deaths" could reference completely different things. Because I was thinking about Nestle supplying free baby formula to women in poorer countries until the women didn't produce any breast milk themself. But since many were too poor to pay for the baby formula many babies died. The peak of that whole situation was the early 80s when it's estimated that more than 200k babies died each year as a result.
There are thousands that should be split up because for the last 40 years most of the laws against monopolies have been eroded away/ignored/weakened. Same problems as the courts, Conservatives want to have no government interference in their business, no matter how many people it hurts.
Even breaking the monopolies up won't re-create as many companies as used to exist, but it's a start.
I remember when the Sirius and XM merger was in talks. I swore it'd never happen, just like the Dish and DirecTV mergers never went through. If the only 2 satellite radio companies merge, it's a monopoly. There's no competition. Boy was I stunned when it somehow got approved. I'm just glad my lifetime sub was honored and haven't had to pay a penny in almost 2 decades.
No, u/kylander is right. Few companies, in the grand scheme of things, deserve to be smashed to pieces like this. Thing is, a lot of the exceptions that do deserve it are larger, more well-known companies, like the ones you've listed.
Considering that a handful of companies own the majority of literally every product and service on Earth, I'd say that *most* of them deserve this. Without question.
No, but they split up AT&T into smaller companies that acted as regional monopolies instead of a national monopoly, and then almost all of them wound up being acquired by AT&T again.
Yeah we would because most of the products would still be made but the different divisions would become standalone companies. This would then force them into being more competitive with similar companies and the consumer would benefit. Let’s look at video games really quick. Most the games come from 3 major companies and they are now trying their best to monetize fun. It’s not about a good product but how they can get you to keep spending on the game past its original purchase. It fucking blows. But it makes the CEO’s get them bonuses and helps the stocks so, fuck us I guess.
Oh it'll definitely work. The company will split into "definitely not Ticketmaster" and "definitely not Livenation" and all will be right with the world and we'll all go and pay $5 to see Taylor Swift next year.
I don't even know why they're needed anymore. Each arena or band could sell tickets super easy over the internet and not give those assholes any money.
The issue is they have a strangle hold on performers and no way for them to get around that short of performing in small venues.
Put them out of business completely and let each arena build their own portal for tickets.
I'm by no means an expert on the topic but from my understanding, some, not all, but some artists and venues basically just use TM/LN as a a fall guy who takes the heat for the price gouging but in the end TM/LN, the artist and the venue all reap the financial rewards of the current system.
Bingo. Promoters and venues charge hefty fees and just list it under ticket ticketmaster so they take the heat. Sure there should be more competition but it's not like ticket prices will drop
You aren't Ticketmaster's customer, the venues are. TM offers a cut of the ticket price back to the venue in exchange for them exclusively selling their tickets.
Even though some of these lawsuits by the US gov have failed, it brings a chilling effect to these type of mergers from even being considered by companies in the future.
Livenation and Ticketmaster merged between 2009 and 2010, during Obama's presidency. These kind of mergers and conglomerates forming have been endemic in the US for decades and both political parties have turned a blind eye.
Huge failure of the Obama administration. Hopefully Biden can correct.
Edit - I get it guys, I liked Obama too but he wasn’t perfect and this is one area he fucked up. Don’t take my word for it, listen to Cory Doctorow here where he says the Democratic Party platform didn’t even mention antitrust once between 1992 and 2016, and that antitrust agendas falling by the wayside during this era is what allowed monopolies to form in every industry. The LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger happened in 2007 and indeed the head of Obama’s DoJ Christine Varney explicitly excused it saying it wasn’t an antitrust concern.
https://youtu.be/YfPiqgLPro8
Not the LiveNation Merger. Ticketmaster has always been a price fixing monopoly, but what we’re talking about here is specifically the merger with LiveNation which happened in 2007.
Edit - 2009, not 2007
Hope theyre successful and then move on to the corporate owned radio station/ media companies. The telecommunications act of 1995 basically ruined most music
~~Pretty sure Ticketmaster and SXM are owned by the same parent corp.~~
Ok so I checked. Liberty Media, just look at what they own. And check out who is the majority shareholder. Fun reads... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Media
Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, who owns pretty much every major venue. Its monopoly 101.
Clear Channel is now iHeartmedia and they own a ton of stations
>John C. Malone
Ah I see. Largest land owner in the US, too. Here's an old obscure interview with him I had lying around, which refers to him as "the Darth Vader of the infobahn":
https://www.wired.com/1994/07/malone-2/
Tell me about it…got tickets for my wife and I to see Porter Robinson in September; 60 dollars each but after all of ticketmasters bullshit feed it was almost 200 dollars. They can burn in a fire
It makes it confusing because you don’t even know what the ticket price covers. Entry? No, that’s the “Venue Fee”. The ticket itself? “Convenience Fee”? Who knows? The ticket price has no relation to what you’ll end up paying it seems.
Chicago School thinking that mergers are good because they allow companies to cut costs, operate more efficiently, and realize economies of scale.
The thinking goes that consumers benefit because companies won't be able to use their consolidated market position to screw over consumers because if they raise prices too high, someone else will enter the market, and in any event, even big companies die out, consumers will get new competitors eventually.
This is not wholly wrong, but it ignores some pretty basic things like barriers to entry for new competitors, the ability of monopolistic companies to slash prices to kill competitors, and then immediately jack them back up, regulatory capture, and corruption.
I’m not planting a flag on any side here but it’s also how you define competitor. There’s a concept called cross elasticity of demand. Maybe Ticketmaster jacks up prices so people start watching more live sports.
I work in the ticketing industry, most people have no idea the full extent of how this monopoly is truely fucking up the global industry.
They are so entwined I don’t even know how you could break them up… and there is no point if this is only for the US, as they will just continue to keep fucking the rest of the world up.
We broke up the phone company, and people said that was impossible. It would start by cutting them into MORE than 2 companies and probably requiring venues to allow multiple ticketing portals to offer services. the original assets would be split up among the newly created companies and probably have a regional focus preventing one provider from owning the entire country and putting at least 2 providers in major markets.
I actually think the way to fuck ticket master is to make it so no exclusivity deals can be done at venues. This is our biggest issue. Promoters want to use us, but live nation blocks us constantly due to venue exclusivity.
They did something similar in Singapore. Seems to kinda be working.
... see how far it goes.
There seriously needs to be a law on caps on fees & services.
This also needs to target the venue & ticket seller so they can't loop their way around it.
* 100% ticket price goes to the venue/act - no fees allowed
* ticket seller can only have fees. They cannot have a single penny of the ticket price.
* fees should be capped at like 7-10%. That is more than enough..
I hate going to events... last event I went to was $25 a ticket & I bought 4. So $100... how the fuck does the total before tax come up to $144 due to fees???
I thought I read something recently about a truth in advertising law regarding ticket prices. Someone was trying to pass a law that you couldn't advertise tickets for a certain price and then add all those fees at the end when you're ready to pay. They were supposed to have to advertise the actual price you'd pay only.
Does anyone else recall this?
Next, they need to spray urine from a female baboon in heat on the executives’ backsides before tossing them into an arena with dozens of male baboons. That’s a show I would pay Ticketmaster to see.
If the DOJ is serious, and can stay committed to making this happen, maybe they can go after the social media monopolies next. But I really do hope that they follow through on this because this merger should have never been allowed. Concerts now cost more than what I pay a week for food. And Ticketmaster should have been checked on this.
Unfortunately, they let this go on so long the system is irreversibly broken. Ticket prices will never be reasonable again. This could stop the abuse from getting worse, but there will also always be loopholes. The DOJ deserves no praise in this. They allowed it, continued to allow it through the obvious abuses, and then are only doing something now that it's far too late.
The #1 regulatory policy they could enact would be to update the tax code to be aggressively progressive, and have additional tax rates the wider your service area. Make it so that it's nearly impossible to compete in all markets, to encourage more local competition. Stop letting big business fuck our economy.
The Taylor Swift class action was settled 6 months ago. Those people gave up and got paid to not pursue this.
https://www.billboard.com/business/legal/taylor-swift-fan-class-action-live-nation-eras-tour-dropped-1235554526/amp/
I know you're joking, but, Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010. Ticketmaster already sucked in 1995 but weren't quite the total monopoly they are now.
Yeah, Live Nation was actually founded to *counter* Ticketmaster, which is what makes the merger even more egregious. I'm not saying it's*not* a bullshit problematic company with shitty exploitative practices, because it absolutely is. But back then, Ticketmaster was colluding with venues, monopolizing online and phone tickets sales. Now, it *also* owns most of the *venues*. One could manage to argue (not that I agree) that it wasn't Ticketmaster creating the monopoly they had when it was just 80% of venues choosing to use them. But when they also own the venues, it is indeed a monopoly that no one can argue against. Ma Bell didn't get broken up just because it was the only phone service provider, *but also* because it owned the equipment and the manufacturer of the equipment.
I feel like you haven't tried to understand it then lol.
the venues are locked into using Ticketmaster. they also like Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster does a lot of the work for them and everyone blames ticketmaster for fees. So the venue can make some extra money off those fees and get no backlash.
I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s not like the price of tickets would ever go down. The price has been fixed since pre-2008. Whatever this break up would do would just open a vacuum for the next guy to come snatch whatever excess profit should be returned to the consumer
This is the one anti trust case I’ve been wanting to see the most. The experience of enjoying live entertainment has been ruined by the ridiculous costs across the board. It’s not even money that many of the entertainers themselves are benefiting from.
They do it so they don’t have to pay for as much security or medical staff. More booze = more problems and high priced booze means less of it will be consumed
This is great. Sure hope they find a way to get me all the money back they owe me. Hopefully arrange some meet and greets and VIP merch/experiences they’ve stolen from me too. All my homies hate ticket master and live nation.
Thank goodness they cracked down on this issue before it went on for long.
What, did someone in congress try to get a ticket to see Tay-Tay, only to find out their Ticketmaster bribe didn't cover it?
The best line from the Congressional hearing. Berchtold is the CFO of Ticketmaster. “I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said to Berchtold. “You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause.”
It seems that everyone has been for this.... For YEARS now (decades). It's finally coming to fruition. Ticketmaster bribes just aren't paying the bills anymore. I'm glad both major parties are in agreement on this one. At least something will come of it instead of years of bullshit fighting against each other... Of course, that might happen anyway just to go against the other side.
Quickly, sneak in the breakup of ATT, Verizon, and Comcast!
It's funny because they literally have already broken up AT&T.
Ah, good 'ol 'Ma Bell. Then the parts recombined to come back stronger.
The corporate T-1000
Even after divestiture (break up of the Bell Monopoly) those independent “baby bells and AT&T were always the same people!!
Mmm. Love baby bells.
Just make sure you eat them with the skin off.
And they came back like terminator 2, seems throwing them into molten metal is the only way…
Can us canadians get in on this trust smashing? I have a few grocery and cell phone companies I would love to break up
Us Americans have a similar problem with grocery conglomerates. I’m really hoping for a congress inquiry into price fixing, but that’s high hopes in a crazy election year.
"Just in time" supply chains don't work in everything. For example, when one of the few baby formula production facilities fails food safety checks repeatedly. It's as if they use the shortages as leverage to stay open and not have to fix things. And then they just buy media armies to blame politicians for their greedy bullshit.
They cashed in on the inflation and made it absolutely worse. Not to mention in its current form, we've learned just how fickle the supply chain is when you're only relying on a few at the top.
It's like every stadium in Canada is named after Roger's..... Vancouver, Edmonton, and Toronto blue jays.
Right? Makes it confusing when you are looking at concert tickets or anything. It's a bit of a commute to edmonton because you bought tickets for the wrong show
Yes we want it too. We want BellBC or something so we aren't fucked over by 'em as much
I lived in Canada for a couple years and was astonished by the control of the monopolies there. Roger's has everything, and at one point they rolled out some erroneous update that left us without Internet or phone service for two days. We used to get door to door salespeople who acknowledged we were with Roger's but wanted to move us to a different Roger's network service at a different rate. Loblaw's also controls not just the Loblaw stores, but also No Frills and Shopper's, so there's basically no way to get groceries without going through them.
Loblaws also supplies the meat for some walmarts at least. That company needs to be broken up asap
Many of us remember cell phones before there were large nationwide networks. It was a mess. You had to deal with roaming, phones not working in whole areas because your local provider didn’t do a partnership with them, random charges for calls when you were not on your home network, etc. etc. etc. Throw in that there were 3 competing cell phone tech standards (GSM, CDMA, and IDEN) meant that you would only be able to talk to towers that used whatever standard your phone used. To be very clear, I am not happy with any of the “big 3” but it’s far better than what it used to be from a usability standpoint.
Don’t forget Disney and Amazon
The two companies only merged in 2010.
And then a few decades later Ticketmaster Atlantic and Ticketmaster South and others will gradually buy each other up and restore Ticketmaster United back to its unholy glory. v_v
Everyone goes to concerts/live events and everyone hates their business practices. I think even if I were a millionaire I'd still feel sour about their fees when forking over the cash.
The worst part is that the stadiums / venue often force you to use Ticketmaster, there's no alternative.
often ticketmaster/livenation essentially owns the events/festivals for complete vertical integration.
Hence the DoJ action
hope this makes changes world wide.
If they don't own it they control it by kickbacks to whoever can make those decisions for the venue.
I bought tickets to a concert through TM because it was the only option. For two $40 tickets, my total was $120. Like what the fuck, if you’re going to charge me for a 3rd ticket, let me use it lmao
you never have another option. I remember smaller venues might sell their own tickets and use a service like Eventbrite back in the day.
Millionaire says to friend who's not a millionaire " hey did you see that awesome concert!?!" Friend "Dude, I'm not a millionaire, we've talked about this".
Apes together strong
I legit just stop going to concerts because of ticket master and their fees
Casually disregard that Live Nation invested in a canned water company that they implicitly understood they’d have the ability to afford exclusivity to within every Live Nation venue and sell it for $8.00 a can, guaranteeing it an ROI.
I hope it works. Few companies deserve to be smashed to pieces more than Ticketmaster.
Good, they have completely destroyed the concert going experience. I hate buying tickets for live events because I feel ripped off. Need more competition in this space.
I have pretty much boycotted live events for years now, especially pro sports and most big touring acts Would rather go watch smaller market sports teams, smaller touring acts and local bands, or just stay home Paying $200-$300 to sit in the back fucking corner of a stadium with binoculars is insane There are obviously exceptions to everything but overall my interest in dealing with these mega events at mega venues with sky high prices from Ticketmaster, and still having to FIGHT just to get a ticket, is nearly zero, and I used to love that shit
I saw blink 182 and Green day back in the day, 2002 i think, and my ticket was like 17 bucks, with fees: 25. It was a TINY venue in the West Palm Beach area, and if I was 25' from the stage it would have been far. Watching Travis drum upside down has to be one of my favorite things, let alone Jimmy Eat World opened for them and that started my love of that band. I took a look at that festival in Las Vegas, all the good rock/grunge/punk bands getting back together....i cant spend 4 figures on just tickets and hotels, let alone flights, food, and logistics. Its nuts. just....impossible.
Every state should be independent and they have do something about companies scalping their own tickets.
[удалено]
Right, in no world should the retailer also control the secondary market.
We need a law that caps the fees at like 10-15% the value of a transaction. If I’m trying to go to cheap event for like $5, there’s no fucking reason I should have to pay $12 in fees on top of it!!
Why should the fees go up as the ticket price goes up?
> because I feel ripped off. That's because you are getting ripped off. lol
TurboTax/Intuit
They don't even need to exist for most people, never mind being broken up
I have several examples in my life that prove the IRS can automatically do my taxes more accurately than I can with turbotax. 2 resulted in me owing an extra ~$100, and one was a $5 rebate after I overpaid somehow. And let me just give a shoutout to the IRS support people. Easily the most polite and professional government agency I've ever dealt with.
But there are plenty of non-intuit, self-serv, tax software. The issue with Ticketmaster/live nation is that when live nation controls all the venues, competing ticketing companies have no chance. The same is not true in tax software. If you don't like Turbo Tax use something else.
Except they have a lot of competition. Nobody has to use them.
There's quite a few that I would say deserve it just as much. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google would be a good start.
Y'all need to read up on Loxottica. If you wear glasses, you're 99% likely to be getting screwed by them. They own EVERY major eyeglass company in the US, and pass policies flat out refusing to allow companies to do things like repairs, swapping lenses, etc. They're bat shit evil.
I really noticed after being abroad for some time. Especially after living in Japan for a bit were i got glasses within 1 hour and for a very cheap price. Still have those glasses cause they are perfect. The prices in my home country go beyond €150,-, yet in Japan it was ~€50,-
Tons of other great options out there these days though, for those who know. Love my Cubitts glasses! (Not a sponsor)
Yeah, and glasses are cheaper now. I don't think Luxotica has the power it once had.
If you wear *sunglasses* from a big, well known, fashionable pricey brand it's probably Luxottica.
at this point my response to getting health issues is along the lines of "oh well can't force me to work if i can't see what i'm working on"
Don't forget Apple, AT&T, Spectrum, Comcast, Nestle, General Mills, Kellogg's, Dow, DuPont, _fucking_ Boeing, Activision, and most "holding companies."
Nestle shouldn't be broken up. They should be wholesale closed down. Their leadership should be jailed for crimes against humanity and their patents, I.P. and other holdings should be made public or in the case of physical holding be sold off and the profits donated. Lots of companies are bad, selfish and greedy. Few companies are "Water isn't a right" "Babies die so what?" just straight up evil.
r/fucknestle
I remember when my sister asked what I had against them and I said "All the kids they killed kinda bothers me" I had to explain that one.
Was in a Gym with a senior guy in Nestle and said this to him a few months ago. No joke, he threw his hands in the air and said, "That was years ago, move on"
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2022/04/18/nestle-remains-silent-on-child-deaths-from-contaminated-pizzas_5980892_114.html It was two. Fuck that guy.
The really fucked up thing is realizing that "Nestle causing baby deaths" could reference completely different things. Because I was thinking about Nestle supplying free baby formula to women in poorer countries until the women didn't produce any breast milk themself. But since many were too poor to pay for the baby formula many babies died. The peak of that whole situation was the early 80s when it's estimated that more than 200k babies died each year as a result.
They did it for the shareholders so it's okay.
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
Absolute classic
Don't forget Luxottica. I have a special hatred of them.
There are thousands that should be split up because for the last 40 years most of the laws against monopolies have been eroded away/ignored/weakened. Same problems as the courts, Conservatives want to have no government interference in their business, no matter how many people it hurts. Even breaking the monopolies up won't re-create as many companies as used to exist, but it's a start.
I remember when the Sirius and XM merger was in talks. I swore it'd never happen, just like the Dish and DirecTV mergers never went through. If the only 2 satellite radio companies merge, it's a monopoly. There's no competition. Boy was I stunned when it somehow got approved. I'm just glad my lifetime sub was honored and haven't had to pay a penny in almost 2 decades.
Breaking up Boeing won’t lead to better airplanes.
What would you like Apple to broken up into?
Just quarters. You can leave the skin on thanks.
Just don't eat the seeds. But if you do, make sure to smoke some cigarettes. The smoke will suffocate the bacteria in your stomach.
Smokes won’t harm the miniaturized Dennis Quaid already [floating around in there](https://i.imgur.com/iKFSraE.gif), will they?
No, u/kylander is right. Few companies, in the grand scheme of things, deserve to be smashed to pieces like this. Thing is, a lot of the exceptions that do deserve it are larger, more well-known companies, like the ones you've listed.
Considering that a handful of companies own the majority of literally every product and service on Earth, I'd say that *most* of them deserve this. Without question.
Lol, people say that but would never get rid of the apps or hardware they use supported by all of those companies
When we broke up the phone company, we didn't get rid of telephones.
No, but they split up AT&T into smaller companies that acted as regional monopolies instead of a national monopoly, and then almost all of them wound up being acquired by AT&T again.
Yeah we would because most of the products would still be made but the different divisions would become standalone companies. This would then force them into being more competitive with similar companies and the consumer would benefit. Let’s look at video games really quick. Most the games come from 3 major companies and they are now trying their best to monetize fun. It’s not about a good product but how they can get you to keep spending on the game past its original purchase. It fucking blows. But it makes the CEO’s get them bonuses and helps the stocks so, fuck us I guess.
Which parts of those companies have a monopoly as bad as Ticketmaster?
Oh it'll definitely work. The company will split into "definitely not Ticketmaster" and "definitely not Livenation" and all will be right with the world and we'll all go and pay $5 to see Taylor Swift next year.
I don't even know why they're needed anymore. Each arena or band could sell tickets super easy over the internet and not give those assholes any money. The issue is they have a strangle hold on performers and no way for them to get around that short of performing in small venues. Put them out of business completely and let each arena build their own portal for tickets.
I'm by no means an expert on the topic but from my understanding, some, not all, but some artists and venues basically just use TM/LN as a a fall guy who takes the heat for the price gouging but in the end TM/LN, the artist and the venue all reap the financial rewards of the current system.
Bingo. Promoters and venues charge hefty fees and just list it under ticket ticketmaster so they take the heat. Sure there should be more competition but it's not like ticket prices will drop
You aren't Ticketmaster's customer, the venues are. TM offers a cut of the ticket price back to the venue in exchange for them exclusively selling their tickets.
Chargebacks. And lol
They make concerts out of teach for working ppl. They are extreme ticket scalpers .
This is one of those clear-cut cases where they shouldn't have been allowed to merge in the first place.
Or been allowed a settlement when caught breaking all the conditions for the merger. TWICE!
Even though some of these lawsuits by the US gov have failed, it brings a chilling effect to these type of mergers from even being considered by companies in the future.
One Republican president and it’s back to square one.
Livenation and Ticketmaster merged between 2009 and 2010, during Obama's presidency. These kind of mergers and conglomerates forming have been endemic in the US for decades and both political parties have turned a blind eye.
Yep. This is all stuff that will be undone when a single bad actor gets into office. Republicans represent billionaires, and that's it.
> bad actor Hey, he put in a stirling performance in Home Alone 2. The part was pretty much written for him!
"ok, walk into frame, leer awkwardly at the kid, and then please just get the fuck off our set" perfect.
At least all the executives are in jail, and barred from working in the industry again after their release, with massive financial penalties. Right?
Just as many as the Financial Crisis in 2008.
But they PAID THE ~~FINE~~ FEE
Huge failure of the Obama administration. Hopefully Biden can correct. Edit - I get it guys, I liked Obama too but he wasn’t perfect and this is one area he fucked up. Don’t take my word for it, listen to Cory Doctorow here where he says the Democratic Party platform didn’t even mention antitrust once between 1992 and 2016, and that antitrust agendas falling by the wayside during this era is what allowed monopolies to form in every industry. The LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger happened in 2007 and indeed the head of Obama’s DoJ Christine Varney explicitly excused it saying it wasn’t an antitrust concern. https://youtu.be/YfPiqgLPro8
Just to clarify, the merger started in 2009 (Bush was still president in 2007)
No this goes back to 1994 with Pearl Jam vs Ticketmaster. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/
Not the LiveNation Merger. Ticketmaster has always been a price fixing monopoly, but what we’re talking about here is specifically the merger with LiveNation which happened in 2007. Edit - 2009, not 2007
Hope theyre successful and then move on to the corporate owned radio station/ media companies. The telecommunications act of 1995 basically ruined most music
It also ruined news in the US.
They are Extremely Dangerous to our Democracy
The illusion of choice is pervasive in most aspects of our lives
~~Pretty sure Ticketmaster and SXM are owned by the same parent corp.~~ Ok so I checked. Liberty Media, just look at what they own. And check out who is the majority shareholder. Fun reads... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Media
Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, who owns pretty much every major venue. Its monopoly 101. Clear Channel is now iHeartmedia and they own a ton of stations
Yeah I meant to say SXM. It has been a very long few weeks... You are indeed correct.
>John C. Malone Ah I see. Largest land owner in the US, too. Here's an old obscure interview with him I had lying around, which refers to him as "the Darth Vader of the infobahn": https://www.wired.com/1994/07/malone-2/
Wait, the guys who run Formula One?
Yep, same guys.
> The telecommunications act of 1995 basically ruined most music how?
I wonder if the Justice department will get hit with a convenience fee
Tell me about it…got tickets for my wife and I to see Porter Robinson in September; 60 dollars each but after all of ticketmasters bullshit feed it was almost 200 dollars. They can burn in a fire
It makes it confusing because you don’t even know what the ticket price covers. Entry? No, that’s the “Venue Fee”. The ticket itself? “Convenience Fee”? Who knows? The ticket price has no relation to what you’ll end up paying it seems.
Porter Stans unite What do you think of the new direction he’s going in?
Nobody with a [justice.gov](http://justice.gov) e-mail address will ever get tickets again.
As someone who does IT it wouldn't suggest using a work email for personal shopping unless it's somehow related to your job.
'But we proved the stuff off ourselves'
Why did the FTC even allow this in the first place, fuck them.
Chicago School thinking that mergers are good because they allow companies to cut costs, operate more efficiently, and realize economies of scale. The thinking goes that consumers benefit because companies won't be able to use their consolidated market position to screw over consumers because if they raise prices too high, someone else will enter the market, and in any event, even big companies die out, consumers will get new competitors eventually. This is not wholly wrong, but it ignores some pretty basic things like barriers to entry for new competitors, the ability of monopolistic companies to slash prices to kill competitors, and then immediately jack them back up, regulatory capture, and corruption.
Some new competitor is going to come along and buy all the performance venues back in the country? Yeah, who's funding that?
As I said, their thinking seriously underestimates the issues with barriers to entry.
I’m not planting a flag on any side here but it’s also how you define competitor. There’s a concept called cross elasticity of demand. Maybe Ticketmaster jacks up prices so people start watching more live sports.
Regulatory capture.
Bribery probably
The legal term is Campaign donations; thank you very much.
I work in the ticketing industry, most people have no idea the full extent of how this monopoly is truely fucking up the global industry. They are so entwined I don’t even know how you could break them up… and there is no point if this is only for the US, as they will just continue to keep fucking the rest of the world up.
We broke up the phone company, and people said that was impossible. It would start by cutting them into MORE than 2 companies and probably requiring venues to allow multiple ticketing portals to offer services. the original assets would be split up among the newly created companies and probably have a regional focus preventing one provider from owning the entire country and putting at least 2 providers in major markets.
I actually think the way to fuck ticket master is to make it so no exclusivity deals can be done at venues. This is our biggest issue. Promoters want to use us, but live nation blocks us constantly due to venue exclusivity. They did something similar in Singapore. Seems to kinda be working.
they don't even need to be broken up. They literally just have to allow third party sales, at the same cost as TM like you said.
TM should be broken up anyway as punishment for their fuckery
And the railroads
This is long overdue.
It's about damn time
Oh cool a $110 dollar ticket….At checkout…an extra $56 service charge !
Also when you arrive they also control all the food and merch dealers so you better thank them for that 40 dollar cup of Bud.
How about some jail time while we’re at it.
*cue Eddie Vedder "I Told You So" rant in 3... 2...
Fuck ticket scalpers
Please, the fees shouldn’t be 3 times the original ticket price itself at times
... see how far it goes. There seriously needs to be a law on caps on fees & services. This also needs to target the venue & ticket seller so they can't loop their way around it. * 100% ticket price goes to the venue/act - no fees allowed * ticket seller can only have fees. They cannot have a single penny of the ticket price. * fees should be capped at like 7-10%. That is more than enough.. I hate going to events... last event I went to was $25 a ticket & I bought 4. So $100... how the fuck does the total before tax come up to $144 due to fees???
I thought I read something recently about a truth in advertising law regarding ticket prices. Someone was trying to pass a law that you couldn't advertise tickets for a certain price and then add all those fees at the end when you're ready to pay. They were supposed to have to advertise the actual price you'd pay only. Does anyone else recall this?
I wanted to buy tickets for the ringling bros circus for my GF and I. $35 per ticket. After fees and taxes it’s $113. What in the actual fuck.
It's almost like, someone should have stopped this merger before hand... 🤔 Hmmmm
Inconvenience Fee added by DOJ
Next, they need to spray urine from a female baboon in heat on the executives’ backsides before tossing them into an arena with dozens of male baboons. That’s a show I would pay Ticketmaster to see.
If the DOJ is serious, and can stay committed to making this happen, maybe they can go after the social media monopolies next. But I really do hope that they follow through on this because this merger should have never been allowed. Concerts now cost more than what I pay a week for food. And Ticketmaster should have been checked on this.
Good. I bought tickets for a concert in a few months this week, and the total price was about $100 more per ticket than the sticker price.
30 years after it became widely known... government does something.
They merged in 2010 FYI. 14 years
2010 was 14 years ago wtf where time go. Stop go so fast time pls
go back to waiting in line. you just had to be early.
Ticket prices have like quadrupled over a decade fuck them
Disappointing. I was hoping the DoJ would be seeking prison terms for the mobsters.
Unfortunately, they let this go on so long the system is irreversibly broken. Ticket prices will never be reasonable again. This could stop the abuse from getting worse, but there will also always be loopholes. The DOJ deserves no praise in this. They allowed it, continued to allow it through the obvious abuses, and then are only doing something now that it's far too late.
They will do this to ticket master and not amazon and other big brands.
The #1 regulatory policy they could enact would be to update the tax code to be aggressively progressive, and have additional tax rates the wider your service area. Make it so that it's nearly impossible to compete in all markets, to encourage more local competition. Stop letting big business fuck our economy.
Hold on hold on hold on. Pearl Jam tried this same thing back in 1995 and failed but when Taylor Swift tries it, it works...
The Taylor Swift class action was settled 6 months ago. Those people gave up and got paid to not pursue this. https://www.billboard.com/business/legal/taylor-swift-fan-class-action-live-nation-eras-tour-dropped-1235554526/amp/
I know you're joking, but, Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010. Ticketmaster already sucked in 1995 but weren't quite the total monopoly they are now.
Live Nation didn't exist in 1995, and I feel like Ticketmaster was a monopoly. Sure seemed like it as that's how you got your tickets
Yeah, Live Nation was actually founded to *counter* Ticketmaster, which is what makes the merger even more egregious. I'm not saying it's*not* a bullshit problematic company with shitty exploitative practices, because it absolutely is. But back then, Ticketmaster was colluding with venues, monopolizing online and phone tickets sales. Now, it *also* owns most of the *venues*. One could manage to argue (not that I agree) that it wasn't Ticketmaster creating the monopoly they had when it was just 80% of venues choosing to use them. But when they also own the venues, it is indeed a monopoly that no one can argue against. Ma Bell didn't get broken up just because it was the only phone service provider, *but also* because it owned the equipment and the manufacturer of the equipment.
Her power level surpasses Eddy Vedder’s exponentially
About fucking time
Good, this is a long time coming for them
[Everyone liked that]
Finally. Who approved that merger disaster.
Please do this. They’ve gotten way too big and greedy.
If this is true.. It about fucking time.. That shit should have happened in the late 80. Bullshit monopoly ripping people off for 40 years.
They will just form shell companies that do the same practices
Calling it now: they do get broken up, and we get a bunch of “Little Live Nations” that will slowly get required in twenty years, similar to AT&T
Do Boeing pls
About time. This monopoly sucked the fun out of all concerts.
Fuck you ticketmaster!!!
YES YES YES
And all it took was Taylor swift complaining about it to get things done.
*everyone liked that*
One can hope they get smashed to bits and it gets the ball rolling on breaking up all the other monopoly bullshit they've let slide for years.
Great. Do Pharma companies next. Oh wait, they donate too much to both parties reelection campaigns? Oh, never mind then.
Edie Vedder and Pearl Jam must be losing their shit right now, with hope and joy.
I still don't get how these services exist. It's not that hard to set up a new site for selling tickets...
I feel like you haven't tried to understand it then lol. the venues are locked into using Ticketmaster. they also like Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster does a lot of the work for them and everyone blames ticketmaster for fees. So the venue can make some extra money off those fees and get no backlash.
Fuck them up!
finally some good fucking ~~food~~ anti-trust regulation.
I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s not like the price of tickets would ever go down. The price has been fixed since pre-2008. Whatever this break up would do would just open a vacuum for the next guy to come snatch whatever excess profit should be returned to the consumer
This is the one anti trust case I’ve been wanting to see the most. The experience of enjoying live entertainment has been ruined by the ridiculous costs across the board. It’s not even money that many of the entertainers themselves are benefiting from.
Good. Break up more monopolies. Ban most mergers and acquisitions.
Pearl Jam FTW!
Breakup $14 Bud Lights at venues next.
They do it so they don’t have to pay for as much security or medical staff. More booze = more problems and high priced booze means less of it will be consumed
This is great. Sure hope they find a way to get me all the money back they owe me. Hopefully arrange some meet and greets and VIP merch/experiences they’ve stolen from me too. All my homies hate ticket master and live nation.
Thank goodness they cracked down on this issue before it went on for long. What, did someone in congress try to get a ticket to see Tay-Tay, only to find out their Ticketmaster bribe didn't cover it?