Hello! I imagine if you are here to read about Ticketmaster it is, at least in part, because of Taylor Swift. If you somehow are not caught up, let me TL;DR you: Back in November, the rush to buy tickets for Swift’s upcoming tour following the release of her album Midnights caused Ticketmaster’s platform to have a bit of a meltdown. Fans trying to buy tickets faced nightmarishly long waits, and many people weren’t able to get their hands on them at all.

The incident sparked rage and confusion among Swifties across social media and a ton of media coverage, including at Vox. The Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a hearing in late January in large part in reaction to Swiftgate to dig into competition — or, rather, lack thereof — in the ticketing industry. The Justice Department has reportedly opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company born after Ticketmaster merged with the concert promotion company Live Nation in 2010.

It is neat that the Swift debacle has people paying attention to Ticketmaster and its parent company’s stronghold on the entertainment industry. But Taylor Swift isn’t why the DOJ is looking at Ticketmaster, and she’s not why you should be, either — at least not entirely.

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When you are a giant corporation with as tight a grip on an industry as Live Nation Entertainment, you can kind of do — and not do — whatever you want. There aren’t a bunch of competitors legitimately nipping at Ticketmaster’s heels, especially in the primary ticketing space, so it doesn’t really have to be a better platform to use.

“There’s no competition, and they know they don’t have to provide services that keep people happy on the artist side and venue side and customer side. They are not held accountable on a competitive landscape, and thus far, regulators have allowed for almost all abuses to go through with extremely minor ramifications,” said Krista Brown, a senior policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly think tank that’s part of a coalition called Break Up Ticketmaster.

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Nobody I talked to for this story thought Ticketmaster faced meaningful competition in the primary ticketing market, and many expressed concerns about just how much (very lucrative) ground Ticketmaster was gaining in the secondary market, too.

“They’re gaining a lot of market share in the secondary,” Brown said. “In primary, they give a cut to artists, but in secondary, whatever profit margin they have, they just hawk it.”

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Antitrust action may be on the horizon — and it still might not be enough

As mentioned, the DOJ is now investigating Live Nation Entertainment and its activities in the years following the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger. That could result in an antitrust lawsuit, the outcome of which would be in the hands of a judge.

“The greatest outcome would be absolutely a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, probably also Frontline Management, their artist management company,” Brown said.

A breakup wouldn’t fix everything. Ticketmaster’s stronghold over the ticketing industry long predates the Live Nation merger, and it would still have a lot of control in the primary and, increasingly, the secondary market. It also wouldn’t guarantee an end to any funny business between Ticketmaster and Live Nation. “Because they are the sole players in a space that have any substantial market share, they would still have no reason to not still collude and act like the same company,” Brown said.

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