government monopoly examples in real life

Active consolidation to gain monopoly power came early, with its purchase of major competitor Ticketron in 1991 and others along the way. Ticketmaster was founded in 1982 and acted as a ticket-selling agency, removing the task from venue promoters, adding convenience to buyers and taking a fee along the way. And then there sometimes were scalpers on the sidewalk or in the parking lot.Ĭomputers, credit cards, 800 numbers and the internet have changed all that in ways that raised the potential for singular control at various chokepoints. You could always take your chances standing in line. When mom took us and cousins to the Ringling Brothers circus at the shiny new Sioux Falls Arena in 1962, she followed the instructions on Channel 11, mailed a non-personalized check to the arena and got six tickets back a week later. And this is where the rub is right now.įor decades, venues sold tickets after negotiating with the performers and promoters. Someone must schedule and organize tours, set up venues, move equipment, arrange hotels for artists and their entourage. Bank Stadium with four-times that many meanwhile, Brazilian guitarist Caetano Veloso might bring 2,000 fans in Northrop Auditorium on the U of M campus. Taylor Swift might bring 20,000 to Xcel Energy Center in St. Some are more attractive than others, both to performers and fans. There is a complicated web of intermediaries.Ĭoncerts require venues. This is not Adam Smith’s classic situation of a butcher or baker selling directly to customers. But collectively, they will go to fewer events as prices go higher. Indeed they might actually spend more overall if individual events were cheaper. Fans collectively will go to more events if they were cheaper. Taylor Swift may only want to give a certain number of concerts each year but, at the margin, she might give more if she netted more, and less if her earnings were lower. Yet supply and demand curves do have their usual shape. The key point economically is that there are dozens or hundreds of market demand curves for live music, not just one.

Yes, there is overlap in customers wanting their “product” - my wife and I could crossover between Michael Buble and The Village People. Rihanna is not Garth Brooks is not Bruce Springsteen is not Taylor Swift is not Jay-Z is not Lady Gaga. This commodity is not a “homogenous product” in supply-demand intro econ. And a couple dozen of each gender and subgenre collectively get a very large fraction of the total. However, the top earnings are concentrated among a few hundred of these. There are thousands of musicians who perform for money.

Government monopoly examples in real life