LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - DECEMBER 08: Sphere lights up with an advertisement for Dead & Company's "Dead Forever - Live At Sphere" residency on December 08, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 17,600-seat, 366-foot-tall, 516-foot-wide music and entertainment venue is the largest spherical structure on Earth and features an Exosphere with a 580,000-square-foot display, the largest LED screen in the world. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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Attending concerts at The Sphere in Las Vegas is a joy. No wonder some of the world’s biggest bands have offered themselves up for lengthy residencies there, with many more big names on the way.

The Sphere’s 4D effects combine with some of the world’s greatest music for concert experiences that are difficult to top. All that, plus attendees get to enjoy unobstructed views of the Vegas skyline while at the concert. Ok, the last part isn’t true.

The Sphere, as the name suggests, is an enclosed concert space. Which is a fortunate thing for fans. As is the case with Las Vegas, along with planned Sphere venues in both Abu Dhabi and the Washington, DC-area, summer concerts would be particularly uncomfortable due to heat in all three locales, and humidity in DC. Factor in the freezing DC weather in the winter, and open-aired venues become wholly insufficient for an entertainment starved global population.

All of which is the point, or should be the point about the most recent verdict against Live Nation. After much deliberation, a jury found that Live Nation is a “monopoly.” Consequently, Live Nation could be required to sell off parts of a combined entity that has proven so successful against the expectations of investors. In a worst-case scenario, Live Nation and Ticketmaster could be broken up altogether. Such is the cost of achievement in the U.S. today, which is very sad.

The verdict was arrived at based on a rather narrow definition of the entertainment market. To offer up but one example, Ticketmaster was deemed a “monopoly” by the jury because it accounts for 86 percent of ticket sales in what the New York Times described as a “government selected a group of 257 amphitheaters.” All of which speaks to the absurdity of the government’s case.

Ticketmaster’s market share in 257 amphitheaters implies that absent Ticketmaster, other competitors in the ticketing space would effectively do as Ticketmaster is doing now. The supposition is the equivalent of green tea giant Bigelow taking Coca-Cola to court for its pour dominance in McDonald’s restaurants. More realistically, and as readers can likely deduce, without Coke products in its restaurants, McDonald’s would sell much fewer soft drinks.

Tickets are no different. Without Ticketmaster, there would be fewer concert venues and fewer tickets sold. How do we know this? That’s what Ticketmaster’s competition acknowledges. 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 replied in the affirmative.

Which brings us to back to how the government made its case against Live Nation. It once again “selected a group of 257 amphitheaters” to make its “monopoly” case. Except that as we see with Sphere’s growth alone, the government is making a lousy case by focusing on a rather narrow portion of a much bigger entertainment space. And it will grow quite a bit narrower in time.

Why is that? Simply because success attracts not just imitators, but wildly ambitious innovators eager to replace those presently at the top. In other words, entertainment venues like The Sphere won’t be the last ones to capture the hearts and wallets of consumers ravenous for entertainment.

Instead of harassing Live Nation for going to such great lengths to create growing demand for concerts, governmental figures should be cheering its success. The latter ensures many more entrants to a dynamic concert space made that way by achievement along with the competition that success invariably attracts.