Is the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger anticompetitive? Does it present an opportunity to test whether the DOJ will adopt the evasion of constraint theory of monopolization which I’ve criticized? These are academic questions. The matter has been settled by the Boss:
A final point for now: the one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing. Several newspapers are reporting on this story right now. If you, like us, oppose that idea, you should make it known to your representatives.
Well that settles that. I’ve always thought antitrust was missing star power (though, Jesse Jackson opined publicly on the Sirius-XM discussion — do readers have any other good examples of celebrity antitrust opinions?). More details here.