Studies have just lately proliferated about how the Biden administration is pushing more durable antitrust enforcement as a technique to attempt to shore up Biden’s woeful ballot numbers on the economic system. The speculation, cited by College of Central Arkansas economist Jeremy Horpedahl, is that Biden could overrule voters’ considerations about inflation and cost-of-living points by hitting allegedly over-sized companies with their energy to set off inflation.
Among the many extra apparent antitrust actions that the Biden administration has pursued was the Justice Division’s motion towards Ticketmaster. As beforehand talked about, Ticketmaster has been blamed for the excessive costs following the drama surrounding the initially deliberate Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. However Sen. As John Kennedy rightly factors out, the sky-high ticket costs are actually for the ticket resellers, not the precise ticket patrons—who typically supply costly tickets as a result of artists like Swift need to make more cash from their very own excursions.
Throughout a Senate Judiciary listening to on Taylor Swift live performance tickets—maybe one of the simplest ways to begin the 12 months within the Senate—Kennedy basically solved the world’s whole live performance ticket downside in only a matter of minutes.
If you wish to maintain ticket costs down, Kennedy argues, it is advisable to ban or restrict ticket resale. This removes the complete level of utilizing bots (or quaint scalpers) on a ticketing website to purchase tickets at regular costs after which resell them at extraordinarily excessive costs on platforms whose whole enterprise mannequin appears to be predicated on precisely that. I discovered it fairly amusing that Sitzik’s CEO flinched so awkwardly whereas questioning Kennedy’s whole line. Why did this occur?
Merely put, SeatGeek will likely be out of enterprise tomorrow if the ban on promoting overpriced secondary market tickets is imposed.
Chief amongst these ticket sellers that few persons are specializing in is StubHub, the most important within the US, of which Viagogo, the quantity six ticket-seller on this checklist, can be a component. Simply as an apart, that is a number of market focus.
StubHub and Viagogo would favor all of the detrimental consideration on excessive ticket costs to be centered on Ticketmaster and never them. And guess what? When you check out StubHub/Viagogo’s CEO marketing campaign, it looks as if they’ve gone out of their technique to encourage the Biden DOJ to go after Ticketmaster and never them—even when they’re the larger downside right here.
A marketing campaign finance contribution submitting with the FEC on June 17, 2024 reveals the next:
StubHub CEO Eric Baker has donated a complete of $829,215.68 thus far this cycle. Actually all of it went to the Democrats. All of it. Of this, $621,660.77 went to those entities:
- Biden Victory Fund
- DNC
- PA Democratic Occasion
- NV Democratic Occasion
- NC Democratic Occasion
- GA Democratic Occasion (also referred to as the Georgia Federal Election Committee)
- MI Democratic Occasion
- WI Democratic Occasion
So, that is all Democrats. Biden reelected. DNC. And the state groups of each swing state besides Arizona.
If this does not sound like attempting to purchase and pay for a DOJ lawsuit towards StubHub’s foremost company rival, it ought to not less than recommend that the corporate’s CEO is a deeply partisan Democrat.
If Trump reclaims the White Home, he would possibly wish to bear in mind how low Matt Stubbs stooped to assist maintain him out of workplace. On the very least, it would not look like a wise paying technique given the present state of the presidential race. And it may gas accusations that the Biden DOJ is hopelessly politicized in favor of Biden and his allies and towards Biden’s opponents.
