Attending a concert to watch your favorite artist perform their latest album has long been a thrilling and exciting experience for fans, one that very well might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But for others, it represents an opportunity to generate significant wealth at the expense of those very same fans. Because behind the scenes of the live entertainment industry, a select group of companies has managed to turn this once-in-a-lifetime experience into a business model based on monopoly-like business practices that fundamentally disadvantage consumers through blatant price gouging and market manipulation.
And at the center of this are two companies: Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which in 2010 merged to form Live Nation Entertainment, bringing together the world’s largest seller of concert tickets with the world's largest operator of concert venues. And with its unparalleled control over the market, Live Nation has since channeled its power to exert an unprecedented level of influence over its industry, hand-selecting which venues get to host the year’s hottest and most in-demand events and, most importantly, under what terms.
So in today’s episode, were going to take a look at how Live Nation Entertainment has managed to consolidate complete control over the live entertainment industry, not only in the primary market when tickets are first released to the public but also in the secondary market where ticket scalpers can sell tickets for ridiculous mark-ups, all of which costing fans millions of dollars
#ThinkingBusiness #ticketmaster #livenation #concert #economics #finance
Chapters:
00:00-02:22: A Merger of Evils
02:22-06:47: Domination Through Integration
06:47-11:49: Extracting Dollars from Fans
11:49-20:06: Getting in Bed with Ticket Resellers
20:06-22:07: To the Monopolist, Go the Spoils?
