~15 years ago, I was working with venues to see how we could handle ticketing, etc. They ALL had exclusive deals where the venue could ONLY sell online through TicketMaster and then TM would handle ~100% of the back office reporting, tracking, etc and even the onsite credit card processing for walk up sales.
It was one end to end system/suite and to replace any of it, you had to replace ALL of it once the contract was up. Not a fun space at all.
I do too! I get so sick of Ticketmaster's fees upon fees upon fees and "sorry, your browser isn't Chrome" junk.
That the selling price is double of what is the buying price, this risk is then carried by ticketmaster. They have to sell the stuff. That is their job.
For the consumer, well, we feed many mouth. Just as many mouth feed us.
(in corona times, there were some practises that are critizable. but it was a exceptional time, where everyone was keeping the money at bay.)
[0] https://congressionaldish.com/cd267-the-monopoly-powers-of-l...
TM makes more money for everyone, that's why they use it.
Consumers?
But, alas, that money too good.
On one hand, free markets involve sellers and buyers coming together freely which exclusivity contracts prohibit, but on the other hand exclusivity contracts are nominally voluntary agreements which is a free exchange. Perhaps free-exchange simply isn't a useful framing here.
This one. Not only does ticketmaster have contracts with most venues unless they own them outright, they're also a very convenient foil as they serve as ire-magnets.
Specifically about Ticketmaster or what has FTC done more broadly?
Proposed a rule against hidden fees (10 days ago). It's also supposed to give FTC enforcement mechanism so that it'd be more effective than state laws that were passed and basically ignored.
Also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon (less than a month ago) for how they're treating third-party sellers. And if I remember correctly a lawsuit against Facebook is supposed to proceed in December, in which the FTC is asking the court to force Facebook to sell Instagram and WhatsApp (I wouldn't get my hopes up on this one).
FTC definitely has some teeth now, but they can't wish monopolies out of existence, they have to go through a years-long court process against an army of lawyers employed by tech companies with a budget that's orders of magnitude higher than FTC's.
Monopolies are not illegal.
If a business obtains a monopoly by offering superior products or innovation, or through superior business acumen, the monopoly is legal. Antitrust issues arise when a monopoly is achieved or maintained by exclusionary or predatory acts.
Ticketmaster is big but it’s not Amazon or banking.
A string of losses will set precedent that will get harder and harder to overturn. It's not clear from the outside if Ticketmaster would be a stronger case but something to ponder.
What I find strange is that people aren't usually reluctant to sign exclusivity agreements because it's very limiting. How did ticketmaster get so big to begin with to force / convince people of signing exclusivity clauses?
One way would be to sign deals reserving venue space in advance for a good chunk of the year. Artists wanting to perform there on dates reserved to Ticketmaster would need to sign exclusivity deals.
This has a network effect. The more they do, the more effective is the strategy and the easier it gets to keep doing it.
By dangling more money.
In the 1980s, Ticketmaster beat the competitors (e.g. Ticketron) by offering the venues a better financial deal.
Ticketron charged the venues a service fee. Venues pay Ticketron.
Ticketmaster flipped that around and made a clever proposal: instead of charging the venue, we'll charge the concertgoing fans extra service fee(s) and we'll give the venue a percentage of the fees collected. To sweeten the deal, we'll even pay the venue _upfront_ money as part of signing an exclusive deal.
https://thehustle.co/the-sneaky-economics-of-ticketmaster/
That's why most ideas about creating a new ticketing startup to "disrupt Ticketmaster" are naive about how the underlying business deals actually work. E.g. if the well-meaning programmers have idealistic motivations to create a new "fair ticketing" system that doesn't charge outrageous fees, the venues will not sign up with you which means you have no tickets to sell at the "cheaper & fair price".
Why would the venues use your new "fair ticketing" system if it means they get less money?!? That's the financial puzzle a viable Ticketmaster competitor has to solve.
I think we would need some entity on the scale of the NFL to fix this. Ticketmaster is too big to take on any other way.
While it's true Ticketmaster does have these exclusive deals, it's demonstrably false that this is the reason why TM still hasn't been replaced.
If you've been around the industry for a while, you'll remember that LiveNation & Ticketmaster were distinct companies. In fact, LN tried to leave Ticketmaster. LN was the one with the exclusive deals with artists. LN was the one who owned the venues.
Yet LN failed. They dumped hundreds of millions into building a ticketing platform unsuccessfully. And eventually just bought Ticketmaster.
It a good data point that even if you have the right contracts, you'll fail if you don't have the right tech.
Artists can play small venues, venues can book small artists, but that's not where the money is.
Artists not signing deals with Ticketmaster lose access to venues, and venues not signing exclusivity deals with Ticketmaster lose access to artists.
There are enough of these on both sides that neither wants to lose the other so they sign.
Side note: I worked at a small ticketing software shop circa the Ticketmaster/LiveNation merger. The CEO got a call from the feds(FTC?) doing background work on the industry's view on how it might affect competition. For the life of me I can't imagine why he said it wouldn't really matter, but I have to assume that Ticketmaster was already so locked in to the industry that perhaps it didn't.