But don’t the artists/venues choose the channel through which the tickets are sold? There’s a difference between a monopoly and having economies of scale. From what I understand, if you’re Taylor Swift and the Rose Bowl or a local brewery and your neighbor’s garage band, you have the same access to the different vendors through which tickets are sold.
That’s why I don’t understand what the legal standing is. You can’t sue Wal Mart for putting local stores out of business because all they did was offer cheaper prices (a result of their own economies of scale) that customers CHOOSE to patronize. If we draw parallels to the Ticketmaster case, the customers here are the Taylor Swifts/arenas/stadiums of the world—they chose the vendor.
Now if Ticketmaster was working in tandem with rival ticket channels and agreeing to set prices at a certain level to keep business/demand at their preferred levels, THATS where you have an issue, and that’s what you’d have to prove in court.
If I’m misunderstanding the business model, then maybe this is all moot. Otherwise, what’s the end goal? You suggest a two-year limit on ticket agreements…that’s fine, but it won’t prevent preferred vendors from setting prices accordingly based on the demand from the talent and venues, it’ll just make contract negotiations more frequent.