The Ticketmaster logo is being displayed on a smartphone with the Ticketmaster web home page visible in the background, in this photo illustration in Brussels, Belgium, on June 2, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

NurPhoto via Getty Images

They described as a “fire sale” the rapid unloading of tickets for erstwhile stage performer Charlie Sheen’s once heralded, quickly lamented stab at stand-up: “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option Tour.” Think of Sheen’s 2011 tour as the opposite of Taylor Swift’s Eras. Which in so many ways is the point.

Swift fans are still yelling at the proverbial scoreboard while bemoaning the difficulty of acquiring tickets to Swift’s record-setting global tour. Their yelling has been enabled by politicians, Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers, and now state attorney’s general seemingly pursuing double jeopardy attacks on Live Nation/Ticketmaster for having had the temerity to make concert options abundant, and at fair market prices.

No doubt those priced out of Swift’s shows will call into question any defense of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, but for fans and opportunistic politicians to claim that Swift’s Eras tour is indicative of how the concert venue and ticketing business works is like saying every S&P 500 corporation resembles #1 Nvidia. No, Nvidia is sui generis. So is Swift. Think Sheen’s ill-fated tour yet again.

While his initially sold out, word of mouth about his performances quickly spread. The “fire sale” mentioned earlier is an apt descriptor of what Ticketmaster and the biggest ticket brokers endured as they held sizable quantities of Violent Torpedo tour tickets that few wanted. Yes, not all acts sell.

Ticketmaster is presently being savaged for its 80 percent market share (actually it’s more like 20 percent) in the concert ticket/venue space, but the critiques and lawsuits blithely gloss over the substantial risks that Live Nation, Ticketmaster, and the top ticket brokers they sell in bulk to expose themselves to daily. For many concert tours and sporting events, demand is quite a bit more subdued. Sometimes demand plummets. Sheen instructs.

What was supposed to be a bonanza for Live Nation, Ticketmaster, ticket brokers and fans alike quickly morphed into something else entirely. Holding tickets for a show featuring a rapidly self-destructing performer of sorts in Sheen, they took a bath.

Which requires a rethink. Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s ability to book acts into venues, and buy tickets for those acts in advance, is very risky. Markets are fickle. Performers are performers. Without Live Nation and Ticketmaster taking enormous risks to book performers while floating those performers with enormous upfront payments through size purchases of tickets, there would be very few concerts to attend at much fewer venues.

Which is why Ticketmaster must expertly favor very few, very risk-oriented ticket brokers. If it didn’t, it would lack consistent buyers on which to lay off substantial risk. Which means Live Nation couldn’t routinely book acts. Its well overstated market share is routinely lamented, but not said enough is that without Live Nation and Ticketmaster, there would be much less concert market share to compete for.

Yet critics persist. Live Nation and Ticketmaster dominate the big events according to ankle-biting attorneys general, but left out is that they uniquely have the ability to stage big tours. That’s what their competitors tell us. When a top SeatGeek executive was asked if "Ticketmaster's platform had proven time and time again that it can move a large capacity of tickets in a short amount of time reliably?”, he answered yes.

Contemplate this as Live Nation faces more lawsuits, plus is required as part of its settlement with the DOJ to allow other promoters access to its technology and its venues. Not asked enough is who wins here? Certainly not performers less able to rely on Live Nation to finance ambitious tours, and by extension, not consumers eager to catch a wide variety of acts that Live Nation and Ticketmaster make possible through an unrivaled ability to move tickets for the biggest acts.

That’s because there are no small and medium size tours without the big ones that Live Nation and Ticketmaster can stage like no one else. As with Taylor Swift, Live Nation is sui generis.