Speaker 1: It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Cosova today. Who should Ticketmaster be more afraid
Speaker 1: of thousands of angry Taylor Swift fans or the US government?
Speaker 1: A group of Taylor Swift fans is suing Ticketmaster, the
Speaker 1: big live events ticket provider. They say the company kept
Speaker 1: them from buying tickets to the pop Stars concerts for
Speaker 1: her Eras tour, while allowing computerized bots and scalpers to
Speaker 1: snap them up instead. The botched ticket sale provoked the
Speaker 1: fury of swift ease all over the US. It's also
Speaker 1: drawn the attention of the US Justice Department. The government
Speaker 1: is now investigating whether Ticketmaster uses its dominance and ticket
Speaker 1: sales to drive out competitors and drive up prices. And
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster isn't the only big company in the government sites.
Speaker 1: The Biden administration has taken an activist stand against the
Speaker 1: consolidation of corporate power among tech companies, manufacturers, even book publishers.
Speaker 1: To sort all this out, I'm joined by Sarah Ford
Speaker 1: and she leads Bloomberg's coverage of corporate influence in Washington
Speaker 1: and reporter Leah Niland. She's also in Washington and writes
Speaker 1: about anti trust Sarah Fordon and Lea and Island. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for being here, Thanks for having us. So
Speaker 1: once again we're hearing about Ticketmaster. Um, in all my
Speaker 1: years of buying tickets, I have never met anyone who said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I got to buy that ticket. Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1: They seemed to be the company everybody forever has loved
Speaker 1: to complain about, and recently they've once again been in
Speaker 1: the news involving like the biggest star of all time,
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift. Leah, can you just remind us exactly what
Speaker 1: got them in the hot water this time? So ticket
Speaker 1: Master was doing the pre sale for Taylor Swift's new tour.
Speaker 1: You know, this is on her new album which just
Speaker 1: came out, which is at the top of the charts.
Speaker 1: Everyone was super excited, you know, post pandemic, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a huge tour, and Ticketmaster completely botched
Speaker 1: the sale. The real problem for Teller Swift fans today,
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster has canceled sales to the general public for the
Speaker 1: pop stars upcoming concert tour after pre sale tickets were
Speaker 1: in such high demand. Tuesday, a crash this site. They
Speaker 1: were using this program that they have called the Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: Verified Fan program that means you had to be a person.
Speaker 1: They were trying to get rid of bots, so they
Speaker 1: sent out these pre sale codes for people to get tickets,
Speaker 1: these kind of robots that go in and steal all
Speaker 1: the tickets before actual humans can dial fast enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people set up computer programs that go and buy all
Speaker 1: of the tickets so then they can resell them for
Speaker 1: even more money. But to try and get around that,
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster had this pre sale code, but it completely didn't work.
Speaker 1: People were waiting in line for hours and hours and
Speaker 1: hours before it even asked them for their pre sale code,
Speaker 1: and lots of people could never get through to get tickets,
Speaker 1: so thousands of fans were really frustrated. They ended up
Speaker 1: selling out all of the tickets before it even open
Speaker 1: to the public, So if you weren't part of this
Speaker 1: pre sale process, you had no luck getting a ticket whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And it's not even clear that they were able to
Speaker 1: actually stop bots because now there are tons of tickets
Speaker 1: for resale for like absurd prices like dollars a ticket.
Speaker 1: So this caused all sorts of tunnel, lots of unhappy fans,
Speaker 1: and prompts recalls from Washington to investigate Ticketmaster for being
Speaker 1: in a monopoly, for cornering the market on tickets where
Speaker 1: if you can't buy it from them, you can't buy
Speaker 1: them anywhere unless you're willing to go to a scalper
Speaker 1: and Sarah, a lot of politicians in d C have
Speaker 1: kind of lashed onto this fight. Now, well, this has
Speaker 1: been simmering for a long time actually, ever since the
Speaker 1: DJ approved this merger back in o J. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice, the Department of Justice let this
Speaker 1: deal through with the settlement that was supposed to resolve
Speaker 1: all concerns about competition and not playing fair with the
Speaker 1: smaller people, and that just wasn't happening. So, in fact,
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster Live Nation has already been under investigation by the
Speaker 1: DJ before the Taylor Swift blow up, but that really
Speaker 1: just thrusted onto the stage for all to see. And
Speaker 1: what they claim is that they only represent what is
Speaker 1: all ticket sales, but when it comes to buying the
Speaker 1: premium tickets, often times you're coming up against Ticketmaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you also have the largest live entertainment events promoter
Speaker 1: combined with the largest ticket seller, and so they've been
Speaker 1: able to also sort of work the markets, so that
Speaker 1: new stars would have incentives to go with them and
Speaker 1: not go with other ticket sellers. So they've been able
Speaker 1: to really exert power over the market. And so we
Speaker 1: have calls from Congress to investigate, and people are calling
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster of monopoly and trying to invoke anti trust laws
Speaker 1: either to discipline them, to to break them up, all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. Sarah, can you just dust off our
Speaker 1: econ one O one textbook and walk us through exactly
Speaker 1: what a monopoly is, what antitrust laws? All these terms
Speaker 1: that are kind of flying around this issue. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: our antitrust laws are rooted in the kind of pre
Speaker 1: trust busting era. I mean, the first one started and
Speaker 1: was passed in. It's really rooted in the idea that
Speaker 1: the more competitive markets are, the better it is for consumers.
Speaker 1: So the more companies that are competing with each other
Speaker 1: to get your dollars, to get your eyeballs, to get
Speaker 1: you know, what you want, the better it's going to be,
Speaker 1: both in terms of pricing and in terms of quality
Speaker 1: of products and innovation. So that's kind of the core idea.
Speaker 1: In terms of what is a monopoly, there's no clear
Speaker 1: definition of what exactly is a monopoly, but it's a
Speaker 1: dominant company that has some sort of exclusive power over
Speaker 1: a market. There have been examples um set by the
Speaker 1: court of companies that are you know, have six of
Speaker 1: the market, but there are also been examples of companies
Speaker 1: that have a lower percent. So there's no magic number
Speaker 1: for a monopoly. And the other really important thing to
Speaker 1: understand remembers that it's not actually illegal to be a
Speaker 1: monopoly in the United States. So we love our big corporations.
Speaker 1: BIGA is not necessarily bad. The problem is when they
Speaker 1: start to exert illegal behavior to keep that monopoly. So
Speaker 1: if they are pushing out competitors, if they are using
Speaker 1: predatory pricing, if they are using exclusive contracts. But the
Speaker 1: way our process is set up, those cases have to
Speaker 1: actually be investigated and filed by orn i trust enforcers,
Speaker 1: and they have to be one in a court of law,
Speaker 1: So the government has to persuade a judge that a
Speaker 1: company has been competing illegally. So it's not an easy
Speaker 1: slam dunk by any means. And LEAs here points out,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of these laws were written for
Speaker 1: a much early your time, and as so often happens,
Speaker 1: like federal government is kind of slow to keep up.
Speaker 1: And is that what we're seeing here that the you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of monopoly in the twenty one century is
Speaker 1: a whole lot different than a monopoly when we're talking
Speaker 1: about big oil bearings or steel companies. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's definitely a part of it. I mean, a lot
Speaker 1: of the monopolies that people are talking about today have
Speaker 1: to deal with digital companies or online companies, and the
Speaker 1: situation there is a little bit different. Not necessarily a ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: but some of the other companies that have come into
Speaker 1: the any trust cross hairs, like Google um often offer
Speaker 1: products for free, and that has had a lot of
Speaker 1: difficulty for any trust enforcers because one of the hallmarks
Speaker 1: over the past thirty to forty years for any trust
Speaker 1: enforces has been how does this business conduct or merger
Speaker 1: impact price? And when you have a company that is
Speaker 1: offering a free product, they haven't quite known what to
Speaker 1: do with that. Sarah. When we look at what politicians
Speaker 1: and Capitol Hill are asking for, what is it that
Speaker 1: they're saying about take master and what they want to
Speaker 1: do using the laws to clamp down on monopoly power
Speaker 1: and di competitive practices, they can reinvestigate that original merger,
Speaker 1: and if they find that the company is behaving in
Speaker 1: an anti competitive way, they can file a lawsuit and
Speaker 1: try to break it up. Well, let's talk about that
Speaker 1: for a second. So we're talking about the Ticketmaster Live
Speaker 1: Nation merger, which, as you say, combined two big companies,
Speaker 1: one that sales tickets, the only one that puts on shows.
Speaker 1: And they had to agree to all kinds of things
Speaker 1: to prove that they weren't going to be pushing everybody
Speaker 1: out of the space. So what did they have to
Speaker 1: agree to? Yea, So the Ticketmaster Live Nations settlement was
Speaker 1: unentered into by a court in two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: and essentially they agreed that they wouldn't try and force
Speaker 1: companies to do business with their partner just because they
Speaker 1: were doing business with one. So Live Nations said, okay, venues,
Speaker 1: we're putting on the shows, but if we're acting as
Speaker 1: your event promoter, you don't have to use Ticketmaster. You
Speaker 1: can use another ticketing company. And ticket Master is that
Speaker 1: if we're ticketing your show, you don't have to use
Speaker 1: Live Nation as the promoter. You can use a different one.
Speaker 1: But over time, there have been a lot of complaints
Speaker 1: about this. I mean, it's essentially asking the companies to
Speaker 1: not compete as vigorously as they might. So there have been,
Speaker 1: you know, just tons and tons of complaints about this
Speaker 1: settlement almost from the beginning. So the Justice Department has
Speaker 1: actually already done one investigation into Ticketmaster in Live Nation
Speaker 1: found that they weren't abiding by this agreement, and then
Speaker 1: they change the consent decree in twenty nineteen to extend
Speaker 1: it for another five years, and they imposed a monitor
Speaker 1: on them. So there is literally a guy whose job
Speaker 1: it is to investigate complaints about Ticketmaster in Live Nation
Speaker 1: and tell the Justice Department if he finds any of
Speaker 1: these complaints you know, are merited. And from there, the
Speaker 1: Justice Department could impose a fine on Ticketmaster for again
Speaker 1: violating the consent decree, or could potentially try and bring
Speaker 1: another case. Sarah and Leah stagram for just a second.
Speaker 1: Our conversation will continue after the break. Yeah, is this
Speaker 1: incestuous relationship and the lack of any national competition for
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster that has created the situation we're dealing with today.
Speaker 1: As a result, our band, which is concerned about keeping
Speaker 1: the price of its tickets low, will almost always be
Speaker 1: in conflict with Ticketmaster. They go from five to six
Speaker 1: to seven to eight. Pretty soon it's all over there,
Speaker 1: what with the Ticketmaster charge, and it's gotten out of
Speaker 1: hand price of concerts, the price of entertainment period and
Speaker 1: what with Live Nation. I said, how can we just
Speaker 1: go in take everything, put it in a pot, split
Speaker 1: it up fairly based on a number of people that come.
Speaker 1: And they're like, you're gonna take a pay cut, No problem,
Speaker 1: I'll make a lot of money. I can take a
Speaker 1: pay cut. That was Pearl Jams, Stone Gossard back in
Speaker 1: Dave grow of Nirvana and kid Rock. So lots of
Speaker 1: people upset about Ticketmaster, both customers who couldn't get their
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift tickets and members of Congress are seeing an
Speaker 1: opportunity to maybe take another look at Ticketmaster and it's practices.
Speaker 1: But aside from really messing up a giant ticket sale,
Speaker 1: did Ticketmaster do anything wrong? Did they do anything that
Speaker 1: would point to them being a monopoly that needs to
Speaker 1: have heavy regulation on them. So there's um a lot
Speaker 1: of debate over whether Ticketmaster did anything bad. Harry, you know,
Speaker 1: they say, you know, there are just we're so many
Speaker 1: people who wanted Taylor swift tickets that they couldn't have
Speaker 1: anticipated that level of demand. The Grammy winner finally addressing
Speaker 1: this week's Ticketmaster disaster on her Instagram, writing in part,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make excuses for anyone because we
Speaker 1: asked them multiple times if they could handle this kind
Speaker 1: of demand, and we were assured they could. One of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of a monopoly is a company that sort
Speaker 1: of rests on its laurels and doesn't improve its product.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that folks who are
Speaker 1: critical of Ticketmasters say is, you know, if it had
Speaker 1: had competition, if it actually had to try and compete
Speaker 1: for the opportunity to provide these ticketing services, they probably
Speaker 1: would have improved their servers so that they could have
Speaker 1: handled this level of demand. They probably would have come
Speaker 1: up with a better system than just emailing out these
Speaker 1: pre codes, some of which may have gone to bots.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to know, you know, just looking on
Speaker 1: the outside, whether it was sort of Ticketmaster doing something
Speaker 1: wrong here or whether it really was demand. And what
Speaker 1: does Ticketmaster actually say in their defense about this. They
Speaker 1: do say that this is the system that they have
Speaker 1: used to do verified pre sales in the past, and
Speaker 1: it has worked. They're not even the promoter for this one.
Speaker 1: So they alleged that all of these allegations about them
Speaker 1: trying to tie services between Live Nation and Ticketmaster is
Speaker 1: flawed because it's the other major promotion company that's actually
Speaker 1: the promoter for Taylor Swift tour well you know. West.
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster said that only verified fans were allowed to buy
Speaker 1: tickets um but the problem was at the demand far
Speaker 1: exceeded their expectations and so they had to slow down
Speaker 1: their systems and slow down the access to stabilize everything.
Speaker 1: They also know that less than five percent of the
Speaker 1: tickets were later posted for resale, which showed that they
Speaker 1: weren't purchased by bots. Ticketmaster also says it doesn't engage
Speaker 1: in ammic competitive practices even though it is the largest
Speaker 1: primary seller of tickets. One other big part about this controversy,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that gets people really riled
Speaker 1: up about Ticketmaster, is this dynamic pricing policy that they have.
Speaker 1: Can you just explain what exactly that is and how
Speaker 1: it works. So, dynamic pricing is where the computers are
Speaker 1: algorithms try and create an individualized price for you based
Speaker 1: on what they think that you'd be willing to pay.
Speaker 1: So whenever you're using a computer, obviously it knows a
Speaker 1: lot about your brows in history. It might know of
Speaker 1: your previous purchases, so the computer algorithm is going to
Speaker 1: try and predict how much you might be willing to pay.
Speaker 1: So you know, Sarah might only be like a little
Speaker 1: bit of a tailor Swift fan. She might only really
Speaker 1: be willing to pay like a hundred dollars for a ticket.
Speaker 1: But because I'm like a die hard, it might try
Speaker 1: and raise by price because it knows that I really
Speaker 1: really want this ticket. And you know, this is something
Speaker 1: that you hear all the time with like airline pricing,
Speaker 1: Like that's why you're always supposed to hear your cookies
Speaker 1: and buy on a Tuesday night so that you know
Speaker 1: you can get a cheaper price on airlines. But Ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: you know, especially because it's the only place that you
Speaker 1: can buy these tickets, it really has people over a barrel.
Speaker 1: I'll just jump in here and say this whole concept
Speaker 1: of dynamic pricing is really a terrible thing for consumers.
Speaker 1: And it really means that companies are able to assess
Speaker 1: what a person is likely to pay or able to pay.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't necessarily drive prices lower. It actually, as
Speaker 1: we saw in this case, it drives prices higher. Well,
Speaker 1: it's an intra sam point to Leah. You had said
Speaker 1: earlier that one of the problems with the monopoly is
Speaker 1: they can rest on the laurels and not have to
Speaker 1: improve their product. And here's the case where they were
Speaker 1: actually innovating their product, but it was to their own
Speaker 1: benefit and not to the benefit of the people who
Speaker 1: are using their service. Yeah. I mean, if there was
Speaker 1: another ticketing company that competed, or if there were more
Speaker 1: than one going at the same time, you know, you
Speaker 1: could check the prices on Ticketmaster versus the other company
Speaker 1: and maybe buy the cheaper one. But because it's the
Speaker 1: only option, you know, you really have to go with
Speaker 1: what they're offering you. So, Sarah, this question of price
Speaker 1: is kind of an interesting one when it comes to
Speaker 1: the public push against monopoly power, and especially politicians, who
Speaker 1: of course want to look responsive to angry voters. If
Speaker 1: tickets weren't so expensive, like let's say, you know, you
Speaker 1: had more like Amazon pricing where they were driving prices down, um,
Speaker 1: putting other companies out of business, but doing it in
Speaker 1: a way by driving prices down. Do you think people
Speaker 1: would be so upset or complaining that ticket Master was
Speaker 1: a monopoly? Well, I mean, I think this example has
Speaker 1: really put a spotlight on a lot of shoes that
Speaker 1: are getting a lot of attention right now and have
Speaker 1: become hot button sort of front page issues. And we're
Speaker 1: seeing a time of persistent inflation, and there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of reports about how, you know, the bigger the
Speaker 1: companies are, the stickier price increases get and the slower
Speaker 1: they come down, even as you know, inflation subsides. So
Speaker 1: these are issues that are just going to people's pocketbooks
Speaker 1: and dinner tables. So I think the reason that people
Speaker 1: have become so passionate about this is because it's really
Speaker 1: hurting people at home. So what can be done about this?
Speaker 1: What is going to be done about this? We'll try
Speaker 1: to answer that question after the break lee And now
Speaker 1: we know what the complaint against Ticketmaster is. What do
Speaker 1: you think Washington will do about this? How will this
Speaker 1: play out both politically and you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: government regulation, possible regulations of company. Well, the Senate has
Speaker 1: already said that they want to hold a hearing on Ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: so this will be the opportunity for them to rate
Speaker 1: the CEOs and everybody to have like a a nice
Speaker 1: cathartic experience. And then the Justice Department has an investigation
Speaker 1: now into ticket Master and Live Nation that is not
Speaker 1: going to be resolved in the near term. These types
Speaker 1: of investigations can take several years or so, but we
Speaker 1: might see out of that either some kind of change
Speaker 1: to the consent to create has right now, or we
Speaker 1: could seem a move by the Justice Department to break
Speaker 1: it up. The individual right now who is in charge
Speaker 1: of the Justice Departments in a trust division is Jonathan Cantor.
Speaker 1: He has spoken pretty aggressively about the need to bring
Speaker 1: more cases focused on monopolies like ticket Master, and he's
Speaker 1: been a big proponent of cases against the tech giants
Speaker 1: like Google and Apple, and so it wouldn't be surprising
Speaker 1: if he wanted to take on a breakup of Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: and Live Nation. Let's talk about that for a second, Sarah.
Speaker 1: Breaking up a company is pretty much the most extreme
Speaker 1: thing the government can do, and taking action against a
Speaker 1: company day labelism, monopoly, how likely do you think that
Speaker 1: is in this case? Well, that's a really interesting question.
Speaker 1: I think you have two different kinds of mergers. One
Speaker 1: kind of mergers where a company has pretty much the
Speaker 1: same kind of business, like let's say a supermarket chain
Speaker 1: or a drug store chain, and they merge, and you know,
Speaker 1: they all become the new you know, cel right label,
Speaker 1: And it's harder to break up a company a few
Speaker 1: years after it's merge if it's completely integrated. You know,
Speaker 1: they talk about how difficult is it to unscramble an
Speaker 1: omelet In the Live Nation Ticketmaster example, you actually have
Speaker 1: two companies that do different things and they have different names,
Speaker 1: and so they can only integrate so much because they're
Speaker 1: different operations. So it would be easier, you know, they
Speaker 1: may have consolidated and integrated some of the sort of
Speaker 1: executive functions and the service functions and the I T functions,
Speaker 1: but all in all, it would be easier to separate
Speaker 1: out a company like that. And one thing that you're
Speaker 1: both pointing up to here is that even though we're
Speaker 1: talking about Ticketmaster, it's really just an example of a
Speaker 1: larger activist justice departmenting the Biden administration. What other deals
Speaker 1: mergers companies? Is the Biden administration looking at for possible
Speaker 1: action in this anti trust sverre well the first one
Speaker 1: is obviously Google. This is actually a case that started
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration. The Justice Department and a bunch
Speaker 1: of state attorneys general sued Google over the exclusive contracts
Speaker 1: it has on cell phones to ensure that it is
Speaker 1: the default search engine on every cell phone sold in
Speaker 1: the United States and that it is also has a
Speaker 1: default search engine on most web browsers. The Justice Department
Speaker 1: said that that is really unfair because it means most
Speaker 1: of the traffic goes to Google, and they have filed
Speaker 1: a complaint in that's supposed to go to trial next year.
Speaker 1: The Justice Department also has a separate investigation into Google's
Speaker 1: power over the advertising technology market. This is all of
Speaker 1: the invisible businesses that are used to buy, sell, and
Speaker 1: serve advertising online. They also have another investigation into Apple
Speaker 1: over its dominance in the Apple App Store, So you know,
Speaker 1: they've really even taking a hard look at a lot
Speaker 1: of the tech giants. That's just at the Justice Department.
Speaker 1: Over at the FTC, they have a case against Facebook
Speaker 1: and which they're trying to unwind the company's acquisitions of
Speaker 1: Instagram and What's App, which happened years ago, but the
Speaker 1: FTC is now arguing we're intended to cement Facebook's monopoly
Speaker 1: position in the social networking market, and the FTC has
Speaker 1: also since been investigating Amazon over a host of issues
Speaker 1: related to its marketplace, cloud computing, and whether it's prime
Speaker 1: subscription service is too difficult for consumers to cancel. And
Speaker 1: the FTC, of course, is the Federal Trade Commission also
Speaker 1: has a hand in all these issues. Sarah, And we're
Speaker 1: talking about a lot of tech and he's back in
Speaker 1: their previous life. I think you reported on the government's
Speaker 1: attempt to take action against Microsoft. Well, that was really
Speaker 1: kind of the mother of all the untitrust investigations against
Speaker 1: big tech, and it's still being referred to decades later,
Speaker 1: and it was considered by many to be the reason
Speaker 1: that actually the market opened up and allowed companies like
Speaker 1: Google and Facebook and Apple to thrive, to grow and thrive.
Speaker 1: And the reason is interesting too, and I know this
Speaker 1: because I've spoken this year about this before. The government
Speaker 1: actually didn't ultimately prevail. They came to a settlement, correct,
Speaker 1: but it had a big effect on the way Microsoft operated.
Speaker 1: Can you describe that, Yeah, I mean think of it
Speaker 1: sort of like Gulliver, you know, being tied down by
Speaker 1: all the Liliputians. I mean it really it was sort
Speaker 1: of death by a thousand cuts, and they all constantly
Speaker 1: had to go into court. They were under like a
Speaker 1: ten year court supervision protocol where they had to go
Speaker 1: in and address all the complaints that could come up
Speaker 1: about them, and it really slowed them down. It was
Speaker 1: sort of like they became I'm a lethargic giant. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: these little competitors like Google, which are now the giant
Speaker 1: Glass saw the opportunity to move in on Microsoft at
Speaker 1: the time when they were so distracted. This is actually
Speaker 1: an entire theory of any trust law that was proposed
Speaker 1: by Tim Woo, who is one of the President Biden's
Speaker 1: competition advisors. The idea is that when the government goes
Speaker 1: after these big companies, that distracts them with the litigation,
Speaker 1: and then they sort of tend to miss like important
Speaker 1: moves and technology. So if you think about it, when
Speaker 1: IBM was the subject of a twenty year government antitrust case,
Speaker 1: it sort of missed the move to personal computers. When
Speaker 1: A T and T was the subject of a government
Speaker 1: antitrust litigation that led to their breakup, they missed the
Speaker 1: move to long distance and ultimately wireless technology. And then,
Speaker 1: as Sarah mentioned, Microsoft really missed the move to the Internet.
Speaker 1: So there's this argument that by attacking a lot of
Speaker 1: the monopolis now the Justice Department is making space for
Speaker 1: some of these new innovations that might be the next
Speaker 1: wave of technology. And is the idea that they're doing
Speaker 1: this explicitly or this is a side effect of these
Speaker 1: investigations a little bit of both. You know, it tends
Speaker 1: to be a side effect. But even if they aren't
Speaker 1: going to prevail, you know, these cases tend to take
Speaker 1: a really long time. The average anti trust litigation is
Speaker 1: like five to ten years, especially depending if there are
Speaker 1: a lot of appeals. So none of these cases are
Speaker 1: going to be resolved in the near future. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about all these tech companies. But this administration has
Speaker 1: also taking a look at like, say, the most analog
Speaker 1: thing you can do, book publishers and lacking the merger
Speaker 1: of two big book publishers. Yeah, the Justice Department this
Speaker 1: year has challenged a record number of mergers, ten which
Speaker 1: might not sound like a lot, but oftentimes back in
Speaker 1: the day you would get like maybe one merger challenge
Speaker 1: in a year, So ton is quite the number, and
Speaker 1: while they haven't succeeded in all of them, in four
Speaker 1: of those deals, the companies walked away as soon as
Speaker 1: the suits were filed. In the book publishers deal, the
Speaker 1: was between Penguin, Random House and Simon and Schusta. They
Speaker 1: lost at trial and they have ultimately walked away. So
Speaker 1: they have a pretty good record so far with being
Speaker 1: much more aggressive on this type of case. So, Sarah,
Speaker 1: what Lie is describing is sometimes just the threat of
Speaker 1: this investigation and the idea that they're gonna spend years
Speaker 1: or enough to make them say, yeah, it's not worth
Speaker 1: it and walk away. Well, it's interesting to see how
Speaker 1: this is actually proven to have a deterrent effect. You
Speaker 1: haven't typically thought about or seeing deterrent effects in the
Speaker 1: antitrust enforcement. And in fact what we're seeing is this
Speaker 1: see change in the approach to antitrust enforcement. Whereas you know,
Speaker 1: before the DJ and the FDC might have been afraid
Speaker 1: to challenge a case because they're afraid of losing and
Speaker 1: they were afraid of setting a negative precedent, and this
Speaker 1: crew is saying, no, we have to challenge even the
Speaker 1: hard cases, even if we lose, because we have to
Speaker 1: let companies know we are going to fight and they
Speaker 1: are going to have to tackle us. And the other
Speaker 1: thing they say is even if we lose, you know,
Speaker 1: if we lose enough of these cases, maybe it will
Speaker 1: finally convince Congress to change the law. So, circling back
Speaker 1: to ticket Master, keeping that in mind, what are you
Speaker 1: watching for as this story unfolds and how do you
Speaker 1: get might impact other companies, other industries and this kind
Speaker 1: of press for anti monopoly laws or investigations. Well, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the Senate is going to have a big
Speaker 1: hearing on this sometime next year, so that'll be like
Speaker 1: one big thing to watch out for. And then as
Speaker 1: this case moves along, there may be some updates. It'll
Speaker 1: be pretty interesting whether the Justice Department sort of goes
Speaker 1: with the minor revisions to the consent to create already
Speaker 1: has with Ticketmaster, or if they do move for a breakup.
Speaker 1: I mean, given the progressive folks who have been in
Speaker 1: charge so far, you know my odds are more on
Speaker 1: a breakup than like minor changes, but you never know.
Speaker 1: Sarah Fordon and Leean Island, thanks so much for joining
Speaker 1: me today. Thanks for having us, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: You can read more from Sarah Fordon and Lee and
Speaker 1: Eileen at Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to us
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