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Speaker 1: We have a little bit of time, I want to

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get in a music news story. You know, we do

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like to cover if we have a little bit of

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time in the show. Some weeks, we'll cover some music

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industry news going on, especially with the audience we have.

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We know a lot of musicians listen to the show,

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a lot of industry people, and I happen to see

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this pop up. And this relates to a subject that

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comes up often on the show, and that is Live

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Nation and it's a ticketing arm ticket Master. It's the

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same company. If you didn't know Live Nation and Ticketmaster,

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they are interchangeable, kind of like Comcasts and Exfinity. You

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can say either one and it's the same company.

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Speaker 2: But again Healthcare Optum owned by the same people. Yeah,

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everybody's good, Like businesses have like a ton of these days,

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but it is kind of hard to keep track of

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the subsidiaries.

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Speaker 1: This is from Music Business Worldwide dot Com And I

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didn't realize this until this morning, but this just happened.

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A couple days ago. Live Nation and Ticketmaster sued by

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the Federal Trade Commission over alleged illegal ticket resale tactics.

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Because something that we've talked about on the show whenever

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we talk about Live Nation and Ticketmaster is how you know,

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because obviously over the years, ticket prices keep going up

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and up and up, long before there was any hint

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of severe inflation in the economy, just completely separate from

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all that, you know, and people feel, people feel gouged,

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and it gets so expensive. And one of the things

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that goes on is, you know, we've talked on the

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show about how these small companies that are effectively ticket

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scalpers will buy up as soon as Live Nation puts

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a show on sale, they'll buy up a bunch of

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tickets and they'll resell them on their own sites at

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a higher price, especially once Live Nation Ticketmaster runs out

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of the tickets. But a lot of them have been

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bought up by scalpers who then resell them. But what

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a lot of people don't know is some of these

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companies that are doing that are actually owned to buy

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ticket Master. So Ticketmaster sells tickets to these own to

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their own yeah, to themselves effectively, and use this system

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to jack up the prices. Yeah, most people don't realize.

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Speaker 2: I know about scalpers, and I've always thought that these

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companies are supposed to have safeguards and please stop all

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of that. Yeah, so I will say that, not that

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I'm totally surprised, but heck wow.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a dirty, dirty business.

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Speaker 2: And then selling them back to you for triple the cost.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, So here's the story. This is again, this

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is from Music Business Worldwide dot Com. The Federal Trade

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Commission has sued Live Nation and its ticketing arm Ticketmaster,

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accusing the company of profiting from scalpers operating on its platform.

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In a complaint filed on Thursday, September eighteenth and the

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US District Court for the Central District of California, The

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FTC accused Ticketmaster of failing to uphold its own ticket

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purchase limits, in effect allowing scale, in effect allowing scalpers

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to buy up large numbers of tickets and to resell

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them on the secondary market at markups. So the secondary market,

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that's these you know, it's them Joe's Tickets dot com

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or whatever. Yeah, you know.

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Speaker 2: It's only three yeah, yeah, they buy all the tickets

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and then if you really want to go, Yeah, the

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only way to go is to pay those guys.

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Speaker 1: And that's why Ticketmaster limits how many tickets you can buy.

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It once except except they don't actually do it for themselves. Apparently.

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The FTC says Ticketmaster is motivated to do this because

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it makes additional fees on the tickets resale. Ticketmaster can

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triple dip on fees, collecting fees from one brokers when

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they purchase the tickets on the primary market, two brokers

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again when Ticketmaster sells their tickets on Ticketmaster's secondary market,

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and finally three consumers who purchase tickets from Ticketmaster on

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its secondary market. Unquote, says the complaint. Joining the FTC

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in the lawsuit are the district attorneys of seven states, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah,

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and Virginia. The complaint alleges that Ticketmaster violated the Bots

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Act bots. The Bots Act, the twenty sixteen law forbidding

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the use of bots to buy tickets in online stores.

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Live Nation has in the past supported the Bots Act,

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or at least you know, on the public Publicly. The

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FTC notes that Live Nation's policy is to allow artists

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to sell to set ticket purchase limits themselves, but quote

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in private, defendants have tacitly worked with these very same scalpers,

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allowing them to unlawfully purchase millions of dollars in tickets

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in the primary market so that defendants can extract more

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profit for themselves when reselling those tickets on the secondary

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market unquote.

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Speaker 2: Rotest created what ruins the world.

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Speaker 1: The FTC alleges that Ticketmaster has been aware for years

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that certain ticket buyers have violated the limit and turned

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a blind eye to the practice. The complaint states that

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in twenty eighteen, Ticketmaster identified five ticket brokers who controlled

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six three hundred forty five ticket Master accounts and possessed

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more than two hundred forty six thousands I'm sorry, two

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hundred forty six thousand tickets to nearly twenty six hundred

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events Jesus FTC complaint against Live Nation. Okay, so oh,

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we have to.

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Speaker 2: Have the ticket prices up so high.

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Speaker 1: So, the complaint states quote. In public, defendants maintain that

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their business model is at odds with brokers that routinely

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exceed ticket limits. In private, defendants acknowledge that their business

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model and bottom line benefit from brokers preventing ordinary Americans

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from purchasing tickets to the shows they want to see

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at the prices artists set unquote. The FDC also alleges

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that ticket Master is engaged in bait and switch tactics

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in which the company displays deceptively low ticket prices to

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consumers and ends up charging much more at checkout. And

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by the way, anyone who's ever bought tickets from Ticketmaster

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knows exactly what that's about. You look at the price

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of the tickets and you think, Okay, they're going to

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cost this. I'm gonna get two tickets. They're gonna cost this,

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probably some sort of extra fee involved, so it might

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be a little bit more. And then you get to

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check out and it turns out it's like, you know,

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you thought you were spending two hundred dollars on tickets,

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you're actually spending over three hundred dollars on tickets with

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all the fees and everything else. And is this fee

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and that fee and you know, anyway, so it says

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your Live. Nation announced in twenty twenty three that it

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was switching to an all in pricing model at its

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owned venues in the US, under which the final price,

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including fees but excluding sales taxes, is shown at the

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very beginning of the ticket percha process. CEO Michael Rapino

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has said that the switch to all in pricing has

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proven to be a success, and the company has backed

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efforts to make all in pricing the law. Despite this,

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the FTC alleges that quote, over the last decade, the

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first price the consumer has seen on Ticketmaster's platform has

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almost never been the price the consumer pays. According to

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internal Ticketmaster documents, the average percentage of fees charged on

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tickets ranges from twenty four to forty four percent of

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the total price. From twenty nineteen through twenty twenty four,

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consumers paid over sixteen point four billion in mandatory fees

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on ticket purchases from Ticketmaster unquote. That's from the complaint.

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The lawsuit is separate from the anti trust action which

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I think we talked about on the show before that

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the US Department of Justice launched against Ticketmaster and Live

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Nation in May of twenty twenty four. That lawsuit alleges

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that the company engaged in quote monopolization and other unlawful

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conduct that swarts competition in markets across the live entertainment

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industry unquote. The DOJ lawsuit is seeking to break up

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Live Nation and Ticketmaster, undoing a year's old agreement that

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allowed the two to merge despite concerns over the company

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potentially employing monopoly power in the live entertainment business. The

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DOJ has accused Live Nation of violating the terms of

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that agreement. In its lawsuit. The FTC says Live Nation

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slash Ticketmaster controls quote roughly eighty percent or more of

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major concert venues primary ticketing for concerts, and a growing

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share of ticket resales in the secondary market unquote. As

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of noon on Thursday, Live Nation shares were down three

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point six percent on the New York Stock Exchange, trending

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at around one hundred and sixty three dollars per year.

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So there you go. So that's the newest. And you know, look,

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I'm a I'm a free market capitalist, and and I

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think that, you know, I'm not into you know, the

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idea of the government coming in and controlling uh pricing

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for for concert tickets, certainly, but I'm also not in

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favor of you know, these companies being able to blatantly

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violate the law and slitch like baying switch, which is

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illegal obviously. And look, I mean, even if even if

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you're someone who takes the position that if you're if

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you're a true free market I mean I say free

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market capitalist, but I say that loosely because I do

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believe that government has to regulate some things, not to

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not to get in political because we don't do that

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on this version of the show. But even if you're

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someone who who thinks that all this is fine, because

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you don't think that, uh, the government should have anything

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to say about it, legally or otherwise, and the FTC

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shouldn't be getting into this. Even if you think that,

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don't you at least want to know as a consumer?

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Don't you want to know why ticket prices are so?

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I just as a consumer, isn't it good to be

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informed about it?

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Speaker 2: But in the very least shouldn't I think there there's

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law involved in the fact that they shouldn't be able

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to violate their own rules, like you're not. The whole

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point of having these laws that you can't buy X

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number of tickets is to stop scalping, is to stop

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people getting ripped off. But if they make the rules

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and then they're sending it, selling it to themselves and

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then selling it to you, Yeah, this whole triple dip thing,

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like that's criminal. In my mind's eye, that's criminal.

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Speaker 1: Well, there won't be any criminal, but there might be fines.

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But I mean Ticketmaster.

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Speaker 2: That that's the other thing and the very least they

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should have to be it should at least be held

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accountable to their own rules and regulation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so, So that's the newest wrinkle with that.

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Speaker 2: Remember where else can you get a ticket? It's they

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have a monopoly on the market. It's it's very hard

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to get tickets to venues outside

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Speaker 1: Of them, of course, of course, and it is a monopoly, absolutely,