the situation with ticketmaster has been moving fast after initial problems with
some of the early access to Taylor Swift tickets.
You had people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying,
daily reminder that ticketmaster is a monopoly.
Its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved and
they need to be reined in.
Just a couple of days after that,
we found out that the DOJ was going to be investigating ticketmaster, their
individual states attorneys general that are looking into the organization as well.
And there are a lot of people wondering if this is
the opening to potentially do something about ticketmaster.
That has utterly failed when it comes to this particular tour but
has been causing problems for decades, even before the merger with Live Nation.
Well, we are lucky here at the damage report to have someone on the show with us
who has been doing some amazing work actually wanna spot like that.
If we can bring up the front page of Jordan's work on ticketmaster and
whether their days might be numbered.
But Jordan, you've been diving into this topic, what are people who might not
have been following this need to know about ticketmaster.
>> So, in the wake of this botched rollout for verified fans for
Taylor Swift, which was their presale event.
The infrastructure on the site crumbled, people had tickets snatched
from their cards, they got put back in the back of the queue, it was a mess.
And all these people called for to break up ticketmaster.
And over the next couple of days, you saw a ton of people joining this effort.
This is something that's been going on for, ten, 15 years now since the merger.
Which again never should have happened and what I think people really need to
understand and it's not just ticketmaster, ticketmaster zone by Live Nation.
Live Nation was a promotional company and
then they expanded themselves into venue ownership.
So they're controlling this whole different side of the live event industry.
You add in the ticketing part, it presents ample opportunity for
them to fix prices, to charge people more,
to profiteer as much as they can.
Live Nation is owned by Liberty Media,
which is run by a guy who was a former director at the Cato Institute.
Who is on the board now of Warner Brothers in Discovery,
another merger that never should have been allowed.
And as in that position has called for CNN to change and be more like Fox News.
So, he is a prolific Republican donor.
He gave over a million dollars to the Trump inauguration in 2017.
And what people don't realize is this company like I said, should not exist.
But there's other ways they take money from artists on top of all
these ridiculous fees, there's something called a merch cut.
And when you go to see your favorite band, you buy the shirt, great,
I'm supporting the band, right?
Well, you're also supporting in large part if the venue is owned or operated by
Live Nation, you're supporting Live Nation there too on top of your ticket sale.
Because what they do is they take 20 to 30% of all merchandise sales at the end of
the night, even though they didn't pay for any of the costs, they didn't pay for
the designs.
They didn't pay for any of the shipping and handling, setting it up in many cases,
not even selling it.
In some places they do, but this is one of the last remaining avenues for
an artist to make money.
And they're taking 20 to 30% off of all sales there too,
because you don't buy CDs anymore.
Very few people buy LPs like vinyl records and most of their music,
like our listenership is through streaming,
where they make .003 to .005 cents per stream.
That's a fraction of a penny per stream.
And that's not where they're gonna make their money.
Traditionally have been through album sales,
they make their money through torn, yeah.
>> Let me ask you a question.
I'm gonna ask you purposefully dumb question.
So, if they're jacking up the fees or whatever on the tickets and
they're taking a third of the shirt sales and all that.
Why don't the artists just not use them?
Why don't they just use a different service?
>> Well, that's great, it's a great question, John.
It's because they can't, there was no other option because here's the thing.
If you play at a venue that Live Nation owns or operates,
you have to use ticketmaster for your ticketing.
If you play at a different venue, they are pressured that Live Nation
pressures these venues to use Live Nation and ticketmaster for
their ticketing also and basically threatens them.
Many venues have said this, threatens them that if they don't,
they're not gonna get future tours because they also serve as a promoter.
So they control every aspect of this industry and
this is in direct violation of their consent decree.
The DOJ when it approved their merger said, you can't pressure people
into using your services, everything else has to just operate as it is.
That's not how it ended up happening surprise and
they control around 70% of the live event industry now.
So, small independent venues get small independent shows that somehow have
evaded Live Nation ticketmaster, it's few and far between.
What we found and what I found with the help of Andrew Perez at the lever in their
10-K filing this year was a direct acknowledgement.
If Live Nation ever faced an antitrust investigation and
they had an adverse income means it doesn't go well for us.
They will basically no longer be allowed to be in the ticketing business.
It was like an explicit admission that, hey,
this merger never should have been approved.
We shouldn't also be able to do ticketing on top of promotions and venue ownership.
This is just totally out of bounds.
Just know to our investors, hey, if this ever happens,
it's not gonna go well for us.
>> Yeah, I know you mentioned in your work of trying to get the exact number.
Live Nation has spent $3 million on federal lobbing's since 2020,
which is both a lot of money and
also potentially not as much as maybe they should have put into it.
But yeah, so a lot of pressure clearly not only coming from some politicians,
both progressives.
And also people like Amy Klobuchar who appear to have this hostile
relationship with ticketmaster as she has had with her staff historically.
So you have some politicians who are really going in on it.
You have people like Taylor Swift who I am discovering and this is apparently like
the biggest singer in the country, with the most devoted fan base in the country.
So, hopefully, those forces combining and maybe if Taylor Swift
can team up with some other big artists who are gonna be doing tours,
couldn't they group their clout?
And maybe force through changes that way cause look, obviously,
the artists need a ticket selling service and they need access to these places.
But these places also need her and Beyonce and I don't know, Dua Lipa or Bad Bunny or
whatever it is that people wanna go see, I feel like that might be a path forward.
What do you think?
>> The thing is ticketmaster has so much power and Live Nation has so
much power over this industry overall.
It's very easy for them to just blacklist someone who tries to go their own way,
who tries to call them out.
Look, the most obvious example is Pearl Jam.
Pearl Jam tried to do a tour without ticketmaster in the 90s and
they ended up there playing in like fields and barns and
county fairs because it has such a stranglehold over the industry.
And that was before the merger.
It's only gotten worse.
And what they do is, they will exploit, especially for like mid tier or
even smaller artists, they will exploit,
how competitive that industry is to scare people into silence.
You're mad about your merch rate.
Okay, there's 30 other bands who want to be on this tour.
You're mad about ticket fees doesn't matter to us.
You got tons of other competitors who will happily take your spot.
So they exploit that competitiveness and people's to an extent selfishness and
lack of solidarity just to further their own business.
So you really can't go around them like Taylor Swift's kind of winking and
even look at her statement, She didn't explicitly call out ticketmaster, her
fans did, she was just like disappointed it happened to her fans and the same.
So the dynamic pricing thing which is you know a demand driven pricing mechanism for
ticketmaster.
This is a new, it started in 2011 but
it really got like a lot of outrage this year after Bruce Springsteen's tour
was the launch of the tickets for his tour was plagued by dynamic pricing.
He came out like two days ago and was like I think it's fine,
I think it's a good idea even he's not willing to talk about it.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well okay well hopefully then politicians
can force something through.
I will say that at least for now I'm going to take a stand and T.
D. R. Will not be doing live shows that any of these live nation owned forums.
I know people have been calling for it and
they've been pressuring me to finally get back out on the road.
But no I will only be doing much smaller venues with very sparse attendance