Everything that happened at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the lack of competition in the ticketing industry:
. Blumenthal asserted, “Mr. Berchtold, I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement. You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause. And may I suggest respectfully that unfortunately your approach today in this hearing is going to solidify that cooperation because as I hear and read what you have to say, it’s basically, it’s not us, it’s everyone but us.
Mickelson also mentioned, “When Live Nation loses money on a concert, they can make up for that with operating income from ticketing and sponsorships. We can’t do that. We don’t have those. Pepsi doesn’t earn money from Coke, but our competitor Live Nation earns money from selling tickets to our concerts.
Berchtold’s testimony encompassed three themes. He emphasized the increasingly competitive nature of the industry, Ticketmaster’s role as a technological and marketing innovator, as well as the ongoing threat posed by “the industrial scalping of tickets, using bots to unfairly gain possession of those tickets illegally.”
Even so, he noted, “Since the merger, we have invested over $1 billion in capital to improve the Ticketmaster system. … I can say with great confidence that technologically Ticketmaster is a much better ticketing system today than it was in 2010. Its performance in large onsales is the best in the industry, it has the best marketing capabilities of any ticketing system, and it is far and away the leader in preventing fraud and getting tickets into the hands of real fan.
Then Groetzinger offered additional insight, as he revealed, “Last year, Barclays Center management came to us and said, ‘We’d like to keep using you for ticketing our basketball, but we want to be able to use Ticketmaster to ticket concerts.’ And we looked into it and couldn’t get the economics to work. So we said to them, ‘Listen, let’s just part ways amicably,’ and we did.”
Then he suggested that there had been “differing interpretations” of the original consent decree. As a result, “One of the things that we’ve done is in instances where venues are seeking to tie in a ticketing and a concert agreement into an overall deal, we have eliminated those. So that there can’t be any instance where there’s the perception of threats or retaliation associated with that bundling done at the venues request.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Ticketmaster set to face Senate Judiciary Committee following Taylor Swift debacleJem Aswad, Variety's deputy music editor, spoke to ABC News ahead of a Senate hearing on the lack of competition in live event ticketing.
Read more »
Taylor Swift Ticketmaster crisis sparks Senate Judiciary hearing, Live Nation and SeatGeek called as witnessesSenators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee will lead Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on competition in ticketing industry with witnesses from major agencies.
Read more »
Senate committee passes controversial school voucher billThe bill creating a school voucher program that could end up publicly funding private schooling passed in a Utah Senate committee on Monday by a 7-2 vote.
Read more »
Live updates: Ticketmaster Taylor Swift Senate committee hearingLIVE UPDATES: The Senate Judiciary Committee is examining Ticketmaster's role in the ticketing industry after last year's Taylor Swift tour debacle.
Read more »
Letter: Nation's defenders are owed special attentionA Mundelein letter to the editor: In the 103rd General Assembly there appears to be a movement to combine the Senate Veterans Affairs committee with the Senate state government committee.
Read more »