Live Nation and Ticketmaster vs. Department of Justice | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: Should we start with the Taylor Swift part of this. Yeah, this involves Live Nation and Ticketmaster and lawsuits and controversies, and and as I always say, whenever we talk about this stuff, you know, it seems like, UH, Live Nation and Ticketmaster comes up a lot on the show when we talk about music news and lawsuits and litigation and Department of Justice investigations and so forth. They're always in the news. But this is the article that you sent me. This is from UH Complete fo Yeah, Complete Music Update dot com.

0:32 Speaker 1: Yep, this just this just went up a couple of days ago. Taylor Swift and Barclays Center ticketing controversies prove monopolist Live Nation is damaging live music, Department of Justice tells jury. UH. The Live Nation antitrust trial got properly under way this week, with lawyers for the US Department of Justice and the Live giant UH delivering their opening statements.

0:59 Speaker 2: UH.

0:59 Speaker 1: Ticketing dramas involving Taylor Swift and New York's Barclays Center were a key part of the proceedings. So let's take a look at this. So, according to this article, the concert ticket industry is broken. In fact, the concert industry itself is broken and because both concerts and ticketing are controlled by a monopolist, and that monopolist is Live Nation. Those were the bold words of US Department of Justice lawyer David Dahlquist on day one of the big Live Nation antitrust trial in New York yesterday.

1:32 Speaker 1: All right, I'm sorry, Well, so this would have been the third because this article went up on the fourth a trial. The Live giants, lawyers and lobbyists tried very hard, indeed, to ensure what never happen, according to the DOJ and attorneys general for forty US states. So forty US states are participating in this Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary unlawfully exploit their market dominance at shows, venues, and ticketing to the detriment of artists, fans, and the wider music community. Live Nation strongly denies all these allegations, of course, and it's now for a jury to hear arguments from both sides and decide who is right.

2:13 Speaker 1: By the way, this is a side note. It is surprising, and I think we talked about this before that the Department of Justice under the current administration actually cares about any of this. But they but they do so good.

2:28 Speaker 3: Happily surprised that that it is on the radar because we've talked about this for years and the artists are the ones who get ripped.

2:37 Speaker 1: Off well and you know the consumers well, I mean we've talked about of course that's the shady course, the shady practices of uh.

2:48 Speaker 3: But it's like you always I always think about the artists like they bust their took us as they go from state to state pilon in shows and it's like they get pennies on the dollar for the tickets. The people are coming to see them, right, But it's the people selling everything that make the majority of the money. Boy, that sounds like healthcare.

3:07 Speaker 1: Well they make Uh, they make the money on merch. Merch is where the money is for the artists. It's not on it's not on ticket sales.

3:14 Speaker 3: Unfortunately, it's not include it doesn't include ticket sales, and it should. Uh.

3:20 Speaker 2: There are some artists that try to rebel.

3:23 Speaker 1: So it says here from the off Dohlquist and the other Dave Live Nations Legal Rep. Dave Marriott of Latham and Watkins Watkins, ll P began the Battle of the stats because both Daves have stats to hand, uh to hand, which they claim prove that they are right. Yes, both sides are represented by Dave, both of whom claim the stats back up their case, which isn't at all confusing. According to do o J Dave aka mister Dahlquist, the author of this article was having a little too much fun with this, Dave.

3:54 Speaker 1: It's a little too much little. It's actually a little annoying.

3:57 Speaker 2: It makes a confusing it's not helpful.

4:01 Speaker 1: According to DAJO DOJ Dave aka mister Dolquist, Live Nation controls eighty six percent of large concert ticketing in the Oh, that's not a monopoly of large concert two no, not at all in the US, and seventy eight percent of the country's amphitheater venues, which we can all agree sounds like something we should be worried about. But of ticketing at large, Ticketmaster has a forty percent market share and for venues twenty percent. Live Nation Dave or mister Marriott countered. One of Live's Nation's key arguments is that the DOJ is slice the entertainment market up into artificial segments in order to make it look like the Live Giant is much more dominant than it really is.

4:41 Speaker 1: It seems likely that this stat bickering will continue throughout the trial, though what jurys really like his stories, and yesterday's opening statements had two good stories to tell, which illustrate the tangible negative impact of Live Nation's monopoly or not, depending on which Dave you believe. Story one, Once upon a time there was an arena venue in New York called the Barclays Center, and one day it decided to change its ticketing provider from Ticketmaster to seat Geek. Except the next day, well about eighteen months later, it switched back to Ticketmaster.

5:16 Speaker 1: So what happened? I mean, we know there was an angry phone call involving Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, But did Live Nation actually use its dominance in arena level touring to force the arena to return to its ticketing business or was seat Geek just not up to the task for providing primary ticketing for New York's big arena venue. So, in other words, you know, did Live Nation somehow strong arm the Barclays Center and in doing so did they potentially do something illegal? So, getting back to the article, according to DOJ lawyer Dohlquist, while management at Barclays Center wanted to use seat Geek for their ticketing.

5:54 Speaker 1: It became very clear of that quote if they didn't use Ticketmaster, Live Nation's touring division and wouldn't send them any concerts unquote. So basically, when Barclay Center moved its ticketing to seat Geek, quote, live Nation punished them and they were forced to go back to Ticketmaster unquote. Before we go any further, that raises a question, is that, is that where is the line between between just being hardball hardcore business people. Where's the line between that and just being outright predatory?

6:38 Speaker 1: And I don't know the answer.

6:39 Speaker 2: I think they crossed it a while ago. I think they are predatory.

6:44 Speaker 1: Is is that but that example, specifically, Okay, you're not going to use our ticketing business. We're just not going to send you anymore because we're this powerful, We're just not gonna send you any more big shows, right?

6:55 Speaker 2: Is that?

6:57 Speaker 1: I mean? Technically, are you going is your order here? Your coffee order? Yeah, okay, Jenny's going to get her coffee order. But I just but I just I pose that question, like, like, where is the line between you know, just playing hardball and actually doing something that would be considered predatory and therefore potentially illegal or at least leaving you vulnerable in some sort of civil action. I asked that question. I'm not a legal expert of any kind. Uh So I don't know the answer. I'm just asking, and I guess you know it's subjective.

7:29 Speaker 1: But okay, getting back to the article. But the Live Nation chief never threatened to stop concerts being promoted by his company's Story division from being staged at the New York Arena and the Barclay Center ultimately returned to Ticketmaster quote not because of any threats, but because seat geek fell down on the job unquote. Okay, story number two. Once upon a time there was a singer called Taylor Swift who decided to sing some of her songs on an airass tour. She appointed Ticketmaster to send her tickets, but on the day the tickets went on sale, Oh to sell her tickets rather, But on the day the tickets went on sale, everything crashed, resulting in a lot of very angry Swift fans.

8:09 Speaker 1: I remember that we talked about that on the show, Oh Dear. But here's the question. Did it all go wrong because the Live Nation ticketing company got complacent because it enjoys a virtual monopoly over concert ticketing and as a result failed to build a decent it infrastructure or was the demand for Swift's tickets, including from dubious Bot using ticket touts, at an unprecedented high, and there isn't a ticketing platform in the world that could have copied in those circumstances. By the way, I tend to think that, you know, I mean, if anyone has the necessary infrastructure to handle the demand for a big tour like that, it would be Live Nation and Ticketmaster, right, so probably the latter.

8:55 Speaker 1: There just isn't a ticketing platform in the world that could have handled that without But I do remember we covered that on the show. Okay, continuing on with the article, Well, according to Dohlquist, the Swift debacle was simply emblematic of a company that has little competitive incentive to build a consumer friendly ticketing product that is fit for purpose. He said, quote, their technology is held together by duct tape. They have prioritized growth over maintaining their systems unquote. And by the way, that's very common, very common in business.

9:25 Speaker 1: A lot of tech companies or companies that rely on tech will do that, you know. They they're so focused on growing and growing and growing their market share, that maybe some of their infrastructure is left to not keep up with what they're trying to do, and they you know, and sometimes websites crash as a result of it. It happens, Okay, So Marriott countered that, yes, the Taylor Swift launch was a debacle, and Ticketmaster never has denied that fact. But this was the single largest on sale ever or her tour.

10:00 Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, and the cyber attacks by touts and other rogue parties created challenges that no other ticketing company could have dealt with any better. The Barclay Center bust up and Taylor Swift the Taylor Swift on sale are likely to be referenced throughout the trial, with the DOJ keen to present these events as tangible proof of live Music's monopoly problem, while Live Nation will insist these are instead incidents that have been misrepresented. Ultimately, the case swings on whether there is enough evidence to show that Live Nation routinely ties its venue management, tour promotions, and ticketing services together in a way that specifically violates US laws at a federal or state level.

10:41 Speaker 1: Though a jury is involved, the stats and stories will likely be a key part of the narrative as the proceedings progress and the two daves present their respective arguments. Okay, now we have a second article that kind of expands on that because it's directly related to that. Now, this is from Digital Music News, which is one of my favorite websites to get music news from. Check this out, and it's got kind of a provocative title to this article. What is Live Nation retaliation insurance? You don't want to know?

11:20 Speaker 1: That's that's the title of this article. Yeah, yeah, so you know, because we're talking about Live Nation and there what could be considered predatory business practices. Okay, and again this is from Digital Musicnews dot com. Former BSE Global CEO John abmont I should have pre read this, Abamandi, I think isn't the only one to deliver testimony that Live Nation retaliated when his venue explored a compelling I'm sorry, a competing proposal. Here's the latest with the federal antitrust law. So again this refers to the article.

11:55 Speaker 1: This refers to the lawsuit we were talking about in the other article, with the federal antitrust trial against Live Nation and Ticketmaster in full swing. Venue owners are testifying that Live Nation weaponized major tour dates to keep them from switching their ticketing to a competitor. Again, like seat Geek, the Barclay Center tried to do. Digital Music News covered testimony from former BSE Global CEO John Abamandi relating to a planned Billie Eilish show at the Barclay Center that Live Nation allegedly rug pulled.

12:28 Speaker 1: Now Mitch Helgerson, chief revenue officer for the Minnesota Wild, has lobbied So I'm sorry, has lobbed similar allegations against the Live Events Juggernaut. According to Helgerson, when is Music Venue explored a proposal from Live Nation competitor Seat Geek during contract negotiations, a Ticketmaster executive warned him that Live Nation could just move its shows to a competing venue. Helgerson called this a credible threat and noted that losing those would have been catastrophic. And again, I just raised the question, is that is that just hardball, hardball business tactics, or is that does that cross the line?

13:12 Speaker 1: Is it predatory? When seek Geek heard the news, they were apparently keenly aware of Live Nation strategy, offering the Wild what it literally referred to as a Live Nation retaliation insurance, that is, a promise to compensate the venue if concerts were pulled. Well, good on sea Geek for stepping up, I guess, but how do you, uh, how do you even do that? Though? How could they put like, if all these events are pulled, how are they going to compensate the venue? Interesting? But even with that, getting back to the article, but even with that offer, and even though the sea Geek proposal would have ranked would have raked in an additional million dollars a year for the venue, the Wild Hockey team ultimately chose to stay with Ticketmaster.

13:58 Speaker 1: The most damning part is that if seat geek has a policy it refers to, even colloquially as Live Nation retaliation insurance, then the company's reputation as a monopoly seems correctly placed. Of course, Live Nation has fervently pushed back against these allegations. In the similar ones posited by Abamandi on cross examination, there was a lot of emphasis on the complexity of switching ticketing platforms, that seat geek had real usability shortcomings. In that Abamandi's case, he already had personal relationships with seat geek execs.

14:38 Speaker 1: However, none of this explains why the Billie Eilis show in New York ended up twenty miles away after so called thinly veiled frets from Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Nor does it explain why the Minnesota Wild would leave a million dollars a year on the table, if not out of fear of retaliation. It's only been the first week of the trial, which is expected to last about six weeks. Time will tell if the jury ultimately agrees with the government's assertion that Live Nation has in fact becomes such a dominant force that it can essentially bully the rest of the industry into taking a knee.

15:13 Speaker 1: But if Abamandi and Helgerson's testimonies are any indication, the first week isn't looking good for Live Nation. So that is from Digitalmusicnews dot com. And again you know the Live Nation and Ticketmaster there. For as long as I can remember, this is not a recent thing. For as long as I can remember, they've always been in the news attached to some sort of controversy investigation, very often over over predatory business practices or alleged predatory business practices. One more little bit of a piece to this.

15:52 Speaker 1: This is not directly relate to this specific trial, but this is from me Music Businessworldwide dot Com. It does relate to ticketing. Music industry groups push us Senate to titan Ticket Act and cap resale fees at ten percent. So this is short, but this will kind of put a put a cap pun fully intended in this case on this what we've been talking about this morning. So again, this is from Music Business Worldwide dot Com, one of my favorite websites for music industry news. By the way, this is another great site if you're interested in this stuff.

16:29 Speaker 1: A group of music and live music organizations is pressing the Senate to titan federal ticketing legislation, arguing that the current version of the Ticket Act is insufficient in protecting fans. The fix. The TICS coalition, led by the National Independent Venue Association, wrote an open letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation calling for changes to the Ticket Act. The letter was addressed to Chairman Ted Cruz, ranking Member Maria Cantwell, sub Committee Chairman Marsha Blackburn, and ranking Member John Hickenlooper.

17:06 Speaker 1: They wrote, quote, when federal policy falls short, fans pay the price. They lose money and cur unnecessary travel costs and waste. Time they missed the show they planned around, and they often blame the artists, venue, or team rather than the reseller or platform that misled them. Meanwhile, scalpers and speculative sellers assume none of the risk and face few meaningful consequences unquote. And by the way, just to just to you know, remind people if you don't know, when we're talking about resellers and scalpers, you know, there's all these we call them the secondary market.

17:45 Speaker 1: Very often, when these tickets go on sale through Live Nation and Ticketmaster, you might notice, and this has been going on literally for decades. You know, shows seem to sell out, big, big tours, seem to sell out very very quickly, and you might ask yourself, how is it possible that these shows sell out so quickly? Even with the internet, how can so many people log on and buy so many tickets at once? Well, very often it's these resellers, these secondary market ticket sellers, who buy up a lot of tickets and then once the show is quote unquote sold out, now all of a sudden, these secondary market resellers, oh they've got tickets at a significantly higher price, but they've got tickets for you.

18:29 Speaker 1: So it is a form of helping. They are it is a form of scalping. They use bots to buy up tickets. Ticketmaster, for their part, they have policies that you can only buy so many tickets at a time, But as we've discussed on the show, it is no secret that those policies are not necessarily consistently enforced by the very technology that is supposed to prevent scalpers and bots from buying up all these tickets at once. So it's a dirty business. The ticketing business is a dirty business.

19:00 Speaker 3: Remember when I was a kid going with my mom and camping out on the sidewalk in a line with other people outside a ticket Master, waiting for the moment that the door would open. And back in the day, the only way you could buy tickets was in person or on the phone, so it was harder for scalpers. They still did it. They still did it, but it was harder on them because you only had those two avenues. And you know, I did this with my mom. We went to see Prince. It was the most amazing experience. But nowadays, with the technology, they should be able to tell like okay, ip address, we've got bots here, because so and so you know, there's four bots in here buying X number of tickets at the same time from the same IP address.

19:51 Speaker 3: But that doesn't necessarily happen. And do they really care? Do they really care? Because what they want is a fast buck. They want the biggest profit that they can get. They want every ticket to sell, absolutely, So as long as they're.

20:06 Speaker 2: Selling, hey, they're meeting their their margins. You know, they're making their profit.

20:12 Speaker 3: And the heck with the venue, you know, to heck with the with the band, to heck with the people, because you know, it sounds like healthcare. You know, it's the big guys. These guys have multimillion dollar salaries. They make a ton of money. You know, there's shareholders that they make a ton of money. And it's always about how much more can you make me? How much more can you make me? Because it's never enough. Then, you know, million dollar profit not enough, make me more? Five million dollar profit not enough, make me more.

20:40 Speaker 3: That's what happens. And they don't care. I don't believe that they care. And the reason I say that is because I can remember. For all of my adult life, this has been a topic consistently. There's been core case after core case. There's been DJ investigations nationally as well as states. We've been talking about this and hearing about this for as long as Ticketmaster has existed. Yes, yes, and they have consistently gotten away and found way is to skirt around the laws that they have.

21:13 Speaker 2: The monopoly on sales of tickets period. They just do. That's a fact.

21:19 Speaker 1: Even program had to back down in the nineties when they tried to They tried, they tried.

21:24 Speaker 3: And they're not the artists that have said, well, I'm not going to sell my tickets to them because I don't like the way they do business.

21:30 Speaker 2: And they try, they try, but then they end up having to go back.

21:33 Speaker 3: Why because all the venues are using that and they're not giving them. There's no alternative way for them to do it. That they get to hold this monopoly. They have a stranglehold on ticket sales. And I find it interesting. Did you get to the bottom part? I don't know if I missed. Did you get to the bottom part of that article?

21:56 Speaker 1: No? About halfway through it?

21:57 Speaker 2: Oh, okay, then I'll hold off on my additional.

22:00 Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, a little bit more to this again. This is from Music Business Worldwide dot Com so, it says. The push comes over a month after a January twenty eight Senate Committee Herey Subcommittee hearing where Blackburn led a panel of lawmakers in pressing Live Nation to do more to clamp down on ticket scalping. Live Nations Executive vice president of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs Dan Wall was present at the hearing alongside musician Kid Rock and other stakeholders. The coalition, whose signatories include the Recording Academy, SAG after a Event Bright and American Federation of Musicians, and more than a dozen other organizations, said the bill contains gaps that bad actors will continue to exploit.

22:43 Speaker 1: They wrote, quote, the Ticket Act is a step forward, but without a complete ban on speculative ticketing and forceable limits on resale pricing and fees and robust end to end price transparency, bad actors will continue to exploit gaps in the law the expense of fans and communities. On pricing transparency, the groups are demanding disclosure of the base ticket price and every associated fee to appear from the moment a customer selects a ticket, not just at checkout quote not requiring ticket price and ticket fees broken out in a is a shortcoming of the Federal Trade Commissions All in Pricing rule, and we are looking to Congress directify it unquote on speculative ticketing.

23:28 Speaker 1: The coalition is called for a prohibition without exception, they wrote, quote as multiple witnesses testified tickets that do not exist, are not in the seller's possession, or are marketed through so called concierge or seat saver schemes are not a service. They are deception unquote and predatory. Tend to agree it's predatory as well. Yeah, you're desperate to go see.

23:52 Speaker 3: Somebody and something like that pops up, You snag it. You don't even Sometimes people don't even realize how much they got ripped off until later on when they find out what the prices truly were, or they talk to somebody else and they go, geez, I spent three hundred dollars more than that?

24:10 Speaker 2: How come? Who conchier's service?

24:14 Speaker 3: It really isn't it's just a fancy word for a scalper.

24:18 Speaker 2: It really is.

24:19 Speaker 3: And the problem has been consistent in that every time there's legislation to try and regulate this issue, it gets defeated or it doesn't even make it.

24:28 Speaker 1: For a vote.

24:30 Speaker 3: You know, I'm hopeful that Okay, the DJ is actually on this and forty states out.

24:36 Speaker 2: Of fifties awful lot.

24:39 Speaker 3: You know, should in Congress do something when this has been a consistent issue time and again, bill after bill of trying to rain this in to make sure that you know, people aren't just getting ripped off because the system doesn't isn't is still not protective of the consumer and the artist. It protects the scalper more than it does the consumer and the artist because the safeguards aren't in.

25:05 Speaker 1: Place, it says here. The letter also calls for deleting the Bills Services Permitted Provision and proposes direct by the Act so that a ticket issuer oh quote, a ticket issuer, secondary market ticket issuer, or a secondary market ticket exchange that does not have actual or constructive possession of an event ticket shall not sell, offer for sale, or advertise for sale such an event ticket unquote. The third demand is for a ban on reselling. This is the important part of this whole thing.

25:34 Speaker 2: Isn't this weird though?

25:35 Speaker 3: That you have to create a band to say you can't sell something you don't have, I know, right.

25:40 Speaker 1: It's wild?

25:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, that should be a basic consumer law. How do you sell something you don't have right?

25:44 Speaker 1: Right that as a loophole. The third demand is for a ban on reselling off tickets above the original total cost and for a cap of all resale fees at no more than ten percent quote. Across the country, fans are being priced out of live events, not because artists or venues raise prices, but because resale markets allow unlimited markups and excessive fees divorced from any added value or risk. A federal prohibition on resale above the original total cost, combined with a strict cap on resale fees, would directly address price gouging, align incentives toward real fan access, and ensure that tickets end up in the hands of fans, not industrial speculators.

26:28 Speaker 1: A companion House Bill HR fourteen oh two pass House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support in April twenty twenty five, and was placed on the Senate calendar in September s two eighty one. The Senate's own version remains in committee. So there you go.

26:48 Speaker 3: So if that's not bad enough, then you have all of the the quote unquote threats yeah to the venues that there's accusations of you know, like about the Billie Eilish part.

27:04 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, where the what was it? The show is in New York.

27:06 Speaker 3: The show was supposed to be in New York, but it ended up twenty miles away. After there was some kind of a thinly veiled threat from Live Nations slash Ticketmaster, because I remember Live Ation and Ticketmaster are the same thing, right, they really are.

27:20 Speaker 2: It's not two different things these are.

27:21 Speaker 3: They're own by the same people, just two different flags they sit underneath. So if you're going to Live Nation, you are buying from Ticketmaster, period, right, So don't think that those terms aren't aren't interchangeable, because they are. Or wherein they talked about the Minnesota Wild would walk away from a million dollar deal out of fear of being retaliated against by Live Nation Ticketmaster, right, you know, So if it's not bad enough, what we just said is already happening to consumers this other side.

27:52 Speaker 3: It's almost like a mafia attitude with ticket sales. These companies are like, yeah, you must come to the dog to get permission to sell this or something like, right, because it is you know, if you're not selling your tickets through us, we're going to threaten to never sell your venue's tickets again.

28:10 Speaker 1: Right, you will get nobody. You know.

28:12 Speaker 3: This is it's it's beyond wrong now. It's it went from the from being a monopolly to now being a mafia. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. If you're if people are afraid, that's yeah, the fear is coming from that. It's it's ridiculous. We've been saying this for years. This is not about the free market. The free market isn't fixing this. That's making it worse. What will fix it is to have regulation that doesn't allow because we have to apparently create a new law because apparently existing law doesn't prevent somebody from selling something they don't even have.

28:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, I am selling one hundred tickets to this concert at a three hundred dollars market concil and I haven't even bought the tickets yet.

29:02 Speaker 2: Well, I don't even have them in my hand yet.

29:04 Speaker 1: The only thing though, that does that does happen in other sectors. I mean, you know, well even in the music industry, like you know, artists will you know, put things on pre sale that aren't necessarily available yet.

29:15 Speaker 2: You know what I mean, they have their own tickets that isn't.

29:19 Speaker 1: But I just mean, like you can you know, sometimes you can buy a single or thing. Yeah, that's an orange.

29:24 Speaker 2: I don't either sale you're selling something, But I'm just that you.

29:28 Speaker 1: Have you have it, but you might not have it yet, is what I'm saying. So you might be working on something that you're or if you're crowdfunding something a project or something. So there are other examples.

29:36 Speaker 3: Huge difference to that in saying I have one hundred tickets. No, I agree, and I don't actually have the tickets. And that's what the article is super clear about is that in a lot of these secondary markets, they're getting their hands on nothing but your money. Then they're getting this huge markup, and then they just take a small portion out of your money and go and actually buy the ticket you could have bought for that price, but they swindled you. And these companies get get better and better at it.

30:06 Speaker 3: In any industry, you'll see, like now, when you go in and put in a search for something, they're buying sponsored spots that get them to pop up to the top. And most of the time we click on what's the first thing we see, right, pay it.

30:21 Speaker 2: Don't do that anymore. Take a look at it. Always. Look.

30:24 Speaker 3: This is what I do now is I always look at what comes up first, and I look for the word sponsored. So I know that's a yes, at least it's labeled.

30:34 Speaker 2: But you can look for.

30:35 Speaker 1: That same thing if you google something.

30:37 Speaker 3: Right exactly look for that word sponsored, and then you know that person paid to have that there.

30:43 Speaker 2: It's not that they came up first because of ratings or because.

30:46 Speaker 1: A problem with that, especially since it's labeled.

30:50 Speaker 2: I'm just saying pay attention.

30:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's just because it comes up first, doesn't mean that's where you should click. You know, check out what comes up down underneath the sponsored off. The venue itself could potentially be selling tickets, right, you know, like the box office in Conquered, they don't they sell them right at the window.

31:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, you can.

31:10 Speaker 3: You can go and buy a ticket in person at their window. You don't have to go through ticket Master or a Live Nation to do that, right. Most venues still do that at least. Yeah, So look for that. Yeah, don't just snag that first one. Watch out for those sponsored Those are ads they're trying to get you to click on them. Yeah, So take a moment to peruse and if you can have the option of buying directly from the venue or the artists, do it, right, absolutely do it because that way, you know, the money is actually going to go back to the artists and the venue actually like these places are actually making the money versus Ticketmaster buying it.

31:47 Speaker 3: And right, yeah, you're basically feeding the multi millionaires that fly in private jets that they don't want to fly with you on commercial flight because they don't want to fly with the peasants.

31:58 Speaker 2: This is who we're up against. The giant people who.

32:02 Speaker 3: Have multi you know, they have giant houses, billionaires, and it's all about increasing that profit.

32:08 Speaker 2: For them more and more and more and more and more. It's never gonna be enough.

32:11 Speaker 3: So we have to curb this by encouraging this kind of legislation to protect the artists.

32:17 Speaker 2: And to get the money to go where it really should be.

32:20 Speaker 3: The bands that pay, you know, they pay in their blood and sweat from thousands of hours of practicing and go to put on a concert. You want the money to go to them as much as possible, So look for the options before you go and buy from Ticketmaster. If there is an alternative that is directly from the artist, or directly from the venue. That might be a better bet for your dollar, and it might be better priced