[qwery]

There's a lot of good responses here, which I agree with. Namely: it works for them and anti-trust law (enforcement) is weak. Competing with a such a well-engineered, deep (vertical integration, etc.) monopoly is extremely difficult and the smart business strategy for a ~startup in the space is to sell out to Ticketmaster. Attempting to challenge them on their turf is more or less impossible at least as a relatively small entity.

But I'm interested in the framing of the question. You say "yet", "still" ... when there was. There was a healthy (at least healthier) market that was cynically, systematically corrupted over years/decades to get to the state its in today. During that period, there were warning signs. There was a lack of an effective counter to the behaviour. It's easy to say that "nobody cared" which isn't quite true, of course. Nobody in a position of power cared. The venues were in a precarious position by default -- easy to squeeze. The acts aren't your friend, they're businesses. Regular people that speak up about this sort of thing get silenced because "businesses exist to make money".