[ceroxylon]

What is the moat of the major ticketing companies? Is it deals with venues? It is hard to rationalize how one company can even get a stranglehold on an entire market like this.

I feel like I could ping any random HN user and build something better in a week, which means it has been done many times already... why don't alternatives gain traction?

[mepiethree]

Yes exclusivity with venues. Live Nation owns and operates or invests in many many many large venues

[acdha]

Reagan halted antitrust enforcement and nobody fixed it, so they were allowed to own controlling stakes in several industries and freeze out competitors. They get exclusives with bands, agencies, venues, and promotions so at each point anyone who tries to do something else runs into a package they can’t compete with: a band which doesn’t play ball won’t get the big venues, a venue which acts independently won’t get the big acts, etc. It’s clearly abusive but they managed to spread enough money around to avoid action before Biden, and then Trump overturned that because he has the same mentality.

jwz has been writing about this for years. I don’t remember if he’s playing games with the HN referrer header on dnalounge.com but you probably want to use https://tinyurl.com/yskf7ypz instead of https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2018/01/31.html.

[dbbk]

Multi-year exclusive contracts paid for with cash advances.