#Angry giant fans software#
Finally Live Nation simply built its own ticketing software and threatened to compete directly with Ticketmaster. Live Nation was sick of paying Ticketmaster’s fees, and the two firms had been battling at the bargaining table. Then, enter the other major powerhouse of the industry, Live Nation, a firm that rolled-up live events until it ultimately became the world’s largest concert promotion company. Under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump, Ticketmaster grew, buying up rivals, becoming more and more powerful.
This was a remarkable potential moment for antitrust enforcement, with the biggest music act in the world brought to its knees by a ticketing monopoly.Īnd yet, enforcers did nothing. The cost to Pearl Jam was in the millions, and it devastated the band. Pearl Jam’s 1995 tour was thus a catastrophe, because they had to play in places like sporting fields which couldn’t hold concerts, so most of their shows were canceled. Ticketmaster struck back, bribing music venues to only accept Ticketmaster as a booking system, which meant that Pearl Jam couldn’t play at most normal locations. They ran a pressure campaign, testifying to Congress, embarking on a lobbying campaign, and pointing to the firm’s acquisitions of rivals and other underhanded tactics in its attempt to control the industry. So the band boycotted what was the then-new Ticketmaster monopoly. The band was angry at the high prices and hidden fees the firm charged their fans, and they wanted a straightforward ticket price - $1.80 service fees clearly spelled out on $18 tickets, which was lower than what Ticketmaster sought. So Pearl Jam, then the biggest band in the world, got mad. Three years later, the fees for ticketing had gotten out of hand. Indeed, Ticketmaster brags about this unlawful merger on its own website.
In 1991, Ticketmaster acquired its main rival in computerized ticketing, Ticketron, which put 90% of the ticketing business in the hands of one firm. The Ticketmaster monopoly story goes back to the 1990s. The inquiry appears to be broad, looking at whether the company maintains a monopoly over the industry, one of the people said. Members of the antitrust division’s staff at the Justice Department have in recent months contacted music venues and players in the ticket market, asking about Live Nation’s practices and the wider dynamics of the industry, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is sensitive. And THAT revelation caused the stock to drop. Yesterday, David McCabe reported that the Department of Justice Antitrust Division has been investigating Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, for antitrust violations. But this time, something different happened. These kinds of bitter cries tend to go into the void, just one more piece of evidence we have too many greedy people at the top and a government that cannot act. It’s a monopoly.Īnd so Swifties, as they are known, demanded answers. The problem is Ticketmaster is the only system. The problem, as this new generation of fans is learning, isn’t just that Ticketmaster is a bad system. No investors were afraid that artists or venues would use a competitor’s software system. But Live Nation’s stock didn’t move at all. Investors would assume that customers would switch to a competitor’s services, much as, say, Ford’s stock drops when it has to do a recall of a line of cars. In the face of such a high-profile embarrassment, a firm without market power would suffer in the marketplace. Why was Ticketmaster’s system so poorly structured? To answer that it helps to look at the firm’s stock price.
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