BREAKING: Justice Department sues Ticketmaster and owner Live Nation, alleging an illegal monopoly over live events in the U.S. https://t.co/yMlRYo0WqR
Originally Posted by :
“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”
Originally Posted by scho63:
Why is LiveNation/Ticketmaster the bad guy when people pay $500 for a seat that was bought for $100 and the person who originally bought it makes a ton? That's free market.
The entertainment industry should find a way to help resolve this.
It seems that non-transferable tickets could work with todays technology.
I think it is a slippery slope.
Maybe you're finally getting it, I'm pretty sure that's the point of this lawsuit. Ticketmaster hasn't shown any interest in resolving this because they get to double dip. We'll have to see. I'm not sure they'll be broken up but this is obviously a play to get them to take their business more seriously.
What caused this isn't what you described. When Taylor Swift's last tour was announced, they didn't even have a "general" sale to the public. Ticketmaster themselves cancelled the public ticket sale a day or two before they even went on sale because of "extraordinarily" high demand. That's why the Swift fans flipped out and caused all this. The tickets never truly went to general sale. Now I'm sure some fans got tickets in a presale but a lot of those tickets ended up with scalpers and bots, LiveNation got dragged in front of Congress for it and pretty much admitted it was because of bots and scalpers. Taylor Swift herself called Ticketmaster out on it. Now some people think Ticketmaster is in on that game. They sell the tickets to scalpers, make a profit, then charge a second massive ticket fee when that scalper sells the ticket to a Swift fan for $1200. Whether they're in on it or not, they get to double dip basically.
Either way, the argument is their power over the music industry allows them to do whatever they want, strongarm venues and ticket resellers, and they have no incentive to figure out solutions for any issues that come up. That's literally the whole point of this. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ChiefsCountry:
It's not a monopoly in legal terms. It's like people arguing that Walmart is a monopoly. You have other choices in the marketplace. Artists have other venues they can choose in a market. You don't have to play Sprint Center - you can play Arrowhead, Kauffman, Sandstone, or even Joe's neighborhood bar. The fees are bullshit and almost racketeering but legally it's okay. I just don't see much of a case legally. Shitty business practices but not much from a legal standpoint.
So I read that the Live Nation/TM industrial complex owns 50 of the 60 amphitheaters in the US. If you are an artist too big for clubs and too small for arenas/stadiums you don't have other choices.
You have to enter long term contracts with Live Nation or you don't have an appropriate size venue to play at.
Even the 10 other sites have to play by TM's rules or they might get black listed and not be able to book artists. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rain Man:
Between the fees and the ticket costs themselves, I've pretty much been priced out of live events. They're simply not worth the cost of admission, no matter what the performance is.
Big EDM concert this weekend with lots of nudity and lasers. You in? [Reply]
Originally Posted by : Ticketmaster hit by data hack that may affect 560m customers.
Ticketmaster has been targeted in a cyber-attack, with hackers allegedly offering to sell customer data on the dark web, its parent company, Live Nation, has confirmed.
The ShinyHunters hacking group is reportedly demanding about £400,000 in a ransom payment to prevent the data being sold.
The group reportedly has access to the names, addresses, phone numbers and partial payment details of 560 million of the site’s customers.
Originally Posted by Stewie:
"The group reportedly has access to the names, addresses, phone numbers and partial payment details of 560 million of the site’s customers."
You mean information like the phone book in the olden days?
What does "partial payment detail" mean? First 4 numbers of CC number?
I'm not sure. A lot of the articles differ in how they list what info the hackers might actually have. I just grabbed what looked like a middle of the road explanation of what's going on. Either way, it could affect a lot of sports fans and concert goers and some articles make it appear the company might have taken its time letting LEO know about the breach. [Reply]
