[brookst]

Mostly agreed but I think the appropriate regulatory response is to split Ticketmaster into three businesses: a venue operator, a ticketing company, and a ticket resale company, and to forbid exclusive agreements between them.

As separate companies they’d seek the best deals and wouldn’t collude to exclude new entrants in each others’ markets.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Yes, the exclusivity agreements are the worst. I think they should pretty much be banned everywhere. Remember back in the 90s what microsoft got away with by getting exclusity with EVERY PC manufacturer.

[petilon]

But each of those three businesses would be monopolies. Better to clone the company. Each clone inherits all IP then goes separate ways.

[brookst]

Each clone would be vertically integrated and would do the same abusive things. Clone A’s venues would use clone A’s ticketing service which would give most of the tickets to clone A’s ticket resale service.

For a consumer who just wants reasonably priced tickets for a particular venue, there would be no change from today under that arrangement.

But if you split the company vertically, the venue business needs to look after its own profits rather than maximizing the vertically integrated profits.

[iudqnolq]

The theory is that the vertical integration gives them an unfair advantage. Split it up, and others can compete on the merits. If there's still no competition, that indicates they're better than everyone else for fair reasons, so it's not a problem. (I don't agree with this theory)

[petilon]

You would have to split vertically then horizontally. If you only split horizontally each business will continue to monopolize their segments.

[brookst]

The monopolies in each segment collapse without the vertically integrated monopoly.

Today you can’t start a ticketing business because Ticketmaster owns so many venues and they won’t use you. You can’t compete in ticket resale because Ticketmaster’s resale gets inventory even before retail tickets are sold.

If these were separate companies there would be no reason, and it would likely be illegal per the breakup ruling, for every venue to use a single ticketing service, or for a ticketing service to use (give a huge advantage to) a single resale service.

The problem isn’t dominance in one segment; that is normal and fine and self-correcting. The problem is leveraging dominance in multiple segments to exclude competition in any of them.

[iudqnolq]

Maybe I phrased it wrong. What I was trying to say is that the theory distinguishes between unfair market dominance and simply being the best. If the splits continue to dominate that would be strong evidence it's the latter.

(The reason I disagree with this is because I think that corporations, like countries, are a social contract that should only be allowed if they serve the people. I think a free market serves the people, but a market needs heavy govt interference to be free. I know that's a minority opinion, so I didn't get into it)

[etrautmann]

Why is there any IP there? Somewhat naively, I would hope that nothing Ticketmaster does could be considered IP but I suspect that’s not correct…