Given that Ticketmaster is essentially the only live-event ticket seller in America, the company is shockingly bad at what it does. Of the many times America’s virtual live-event ticketing monopoly has thoroughly screwed up, the botched presale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stands out.
Under the law, the agency is supposed to examine all corporate deals above a certain size and stop the ones that look dangerous or, as the law says, “tend to create a monopoly.” On that front, the Live Nation/Ticketmaster deal looked like it had obvious problems: For instance, the country’s de facto concert promotion monopoly wanted to buy a live-event ticketing monopoly, creating an even bigger monopoly.