#Michael Rapino

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ticketmaster jacks us for billions so it can pocket millions

NEXT WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Corruption is a system of concentrated gains and diffused costs: cheaters make a lot of money, and their victims each lose a little. The cheater has a much larger pool of money to spend on keeping the scam going, and the victims need to pay again to fight the cheater.

Actually, it's worse. The victim pays once when they are cheated, then, they pay a second time (in time and/or money) when they fight back against the cheater.

But in order to fight back effectively, the victims need to band together – it doesn't make sense for one victim to pony up to counter the cheater, because the cheater stole from a lot of people and can therefore spend far more than the victim lost and still come out ahead.

This is the third time the victim pays: they pay the "collective action" tax of locating other victims, agreeing to a common strategy for fighting back, and then coordinating with all those co-victims to keep the campaign up.

But actually, it's even worse. Because most corruption isn't just dishonest, it's incredibly wasteful. Corruption involves stealing ten dollars from you to make a dime for the cheater. The polluter who gives you cancer rather than cleaning up their industrial process costs you millions in medical bills – and maybe costs your family the lifelong trauma and expense of living with your death. They pocket an infinitesimal fraction of those costs. The rest is just wasted. They're setting your house on fire to spare themselves the cost of a match to light their cigar.

This is yet another way in which the deck is stacked in favor of corruption. A victim of corruption is placed in a condition of precarity and misery from which is it difficult to marshal a counteroffensive. The cheater, meanwhile, is made stronger and more comfortable by their corrupt activities. Immiserated victims must undertake the hard, ongoing work of acting together to be effective against the cheater. The cheater answers only to themself, avoiding the collective action costs that the victims pay every time they seek to act.

All of this is why we have governments. A government is (said to be) a democratically accountable way to meet the concentrated power of the corrupt with the concentrated power of the victims of corruption. Governments are many things, but they are especially a way of solving the collective action problem of enforcing the rules against cheaters. This is partially in service to justice – no one likes to be cheated, and a society of rampant and routine cheating is unstable and prone to collapse.

But it's also a matter of efficiency. While it makes a certain kind of selfish sense for the cheater to liquidate our dollar to make their penny, from a societal perspective, it's a catastrophe. Letting Wall Street slumlords corner regional markets in single family dwellings makes large amounts of money for their investors, but it costs those cities unimaginable amounts in public services as their housing stock decays, homelessness spikes, and schools and public services crumble for want of local taxes.

The paltry sums that Flint's creditors extracted by insisting on switching to a chlorinated water-supply that leeched lead out of the city's water infrastructure are crumbs compared to the vast, lifelong costs of giving an all the children in a city lead poisoning, to say nothing of the costs to the city as a city nor forever tainted by this unspeakably evil crime.

This is why inequality – and its handmaiden, monopoly – is so dangerous. The more concentrated private wealth becomes, the harder it is for the state to police, and the more likely it is that this private wealth will corrupt our officials. We see this all around us – for example, when Supreme Court justices receive lavish gifts from billionaires whom they later rule in favor of:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

Through the neoliberal era – the past forty years of billionaire-friendly Reaganomics – we've seen increasing concentration in wealth, coupled to increasing collusion between the wealthy and the government to protect the corrupt against the public. Think of the IRS's long decay, in which it turned a blind eye to increasingly blatant tax evasion by the ultra-wealthy, while training its fire on working people who fudge a few bucks on their returns:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

Likewise, think of the governmental obsession with "welfare cheats," no matter what the cost to families who are kicked off food stamps and Medicaid:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/medicaid-enrollment/

All this in the midst of a corporate crime-wave that is not only unpunished, it's utterly unremarked-upon:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/07/solar-panel-for-a-sex-machine/#a-single-proposition

This emphasis on benefits cheating and indifference to corporate crime really highlights the drag that corruption places on a society's efficiency. Even if you believe that there's a lot of welfare fraud (there isn't!), the dollar in "undeserved" food stamps spent by a cheater costs society…a dollar. Meanwhile the dollar that a corporate criminal makes by skimping on workplace safety costs society thousands of dollars to care for the worker who is then maimed on the job.

This is very easy to see in the world of corporate environmental crime. The "social cost of carbon" measures the total cost of pollution: the injuries caused by marinating in fossil fuel extraction, processing and combustion byproducts; as well as the loss of life and property from climate events. These costs are blistering, so high that every MWh of renewable power we bring online saves us $100 in social carbon costs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon

Governments that sleep on corporate crime are objectively governing badly. That's why the antitrust failures of every US presidential administration from Carter to Trump are so damning: they set the stage for later corruption that would not only be carried out on a larger scale than smaller firms could accomplish, but also for those large firms to corrupt the political process.

This is the Ticketmaster story. The superpredator that is today's Ticketmaster is the end-point of a series of ever-more corrupt mergers, waved through by every-more pliable presidential administrations. It was bad enough when Bush I allowed Ticketmaster to gobble up Ticketron in 1990. After all, the company had already proven itself to be a cesspit of corrupt, bullying activity.

The Ticketron acquisition kicked off a two-decade-long corporate crime-spree that produced a mountain of evidence proving Ticketmaster's nature as an inherently corrupt enterprise that acquired power for the purpose of abusing that power, at the expense of creative workers, the public, and the owners of venues:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/

Despite this, the Obama administration waved through an acquisition that was obviously far more dangerous that the Ticketron caper: the 2010 merger between Ticketmaster and the concert promoter Live Nation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Nation_Entertainment#History

After a decade and a half of vertical monopoly power – Ticketmaster/Live Nation controlling ticketing, promotion and venues – the company has grown from a dangerous octopus with its tentacles twined around the industry into a kraken that is strangling every kind of live event and everyone who earns a living from them. This has produced an ever-more obvious string of scandals, most notably the company's assault on Swifties:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/20/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-will-eventually-stop/

A combination of mounting public outrage (with Swifties at the vanguard) and the Biden administration's generational enthusiasm for smashing corporate power has led, at last, to a reckoning with the Ticketmaster kraken:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/30/nix-fix-the-tix/#something-must-be-done-there-we-did-something

Ticketmaster is a famously opaque organization. When Rebecca Giblin and I were working on Chokepoint Capitalism, our book on monopoly and creative labor markets, we were able to speak on the record to insiders from every part of the industry, except live performance:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

As soon as we raised Ticketmaster/Live Nation with club owners and other events industry insiders, they'd go pale and quiet and tell us that they didn't feel comfortable staying on the record. TM/LN has a well-deserved mafia-style reputation for savage retaliation against snitches.

With the DOJ Antitrust Division chasing Ticketmaster through the courts, we're starting to get a rare, on-the-record glimpse of TM/LN's operations, as its internal documents find their pay into court records. In response Ticketmaster's spokesliars have embarked on an epic spin campaign, to "contextualize" these damning numbers and paint the company as a weak, low-margin business that has been unfairly set-upon by the bullies at the DOJ.

In his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller offers a spectacular, must-read breakdown of these documents and the ensuing spin:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/is-ticketmaster-telling-the-truth

Stoller starts with Ticketmaster's insistence that it is barely profitable. Though this is true on paper, the numbers just don't add up. For one thing, anyone who's bought a ticket can see, printed on its face, TM's junk fees: "a 'service fee' without any obvious service [and] a 'convenience fee' that is anything but convenient."

Far more damning is a comparison between the price of a Ticketmaster ticket in the US vs the EU. The EU has legally mandated competitive ticketing, and the tickets there are far cheaper. A US ticket to see Taylor Swift will run you $2,600 – the same ticket costs $340 in the EU. As Stoller writes:

An American could fly to Paris, spend a few nights at a nice hotel, see a Taylor Swift concert, and fly back, for less than it costs to see that same show in the U.S.

How to make sense of this contradiction? How can Ticketmaster show such a low profit margin on its books but somehow end up costing event-goers such an absurd premium?

Start with the fact that Ticketmaster has three businesses, not just one. They sell tickets, but they also promote concerts (that is, front the money for personnel, travel and marketing), and they also own a bunch of the largest and most profitable venues in the country.

This allows them to play a shell-game that's very similar to (and possibly not actually different from) money-laundering, where money is shuffled between entities in order to shield it from creditors, suppliers or tax agents:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/explosive-new-documents-unearthed

But this presents a problem for Ticketmaster. They're a publicly traded company and their investors demand high returns. And unlike performers or venue owners, investors have power over Ticketmaster management. Keeping "margin per ticket" number as low as possible lets Ticketmaster minimize the revenue it has to share with the people who actually do the work and invest the capital in live performances. But for investors, they need to show another number, one that's as high as possible, to keep the investors happy.

That number is "Adjusted Operating Income" or AOI. While gross margins are the difference between the face value of a ticket and the sum remitted to the venue and the performer, AOI factors in all the other revenue TM/LN books from that ticket, like kickbacks. TM/LN's AOI is very healthy: it's 37% on tickets and 61% on promotions.

Those sums delight TM/LN's investors, and they express their joy through lavish executive compensation packages. CEO Michael Rapino is America's fifth-highest paid CEO, at $139m/year (that's eight times the Fortune 500 average). His sidekick Joe Berchtold is America's highest paid CFO, at $54m. The total AOI for TM/LN is $732m/year – and 19% of that is being paid to two of its execs.

But LN/TM has a third line of business: operating venues. The AOI for these venues is just 1.7%. If this were a normal, cutthroat business, you'd expect those same return-focused investors to insist on their handsomely compensated execs selling off that low-margin turkey. But nevertheless, TM/LN keeps those venues on its books.

When those execs talk to the public, they use the poor profit margins of ticketing and the poor AOI on venues to plead poverty: "how can we be a monopoly when we're barely scraping by?"

But when they talk to the investors who decide whether to pay them 800% of the S&P500 average, they are more forthcoming.

Keeping the margins low on tickets – and making up the money with kickbacks and other corrupt payments – means that potential rival ticketing firms can't afford to get into the business. Without the venue and promotion business, those rivals wouldn't be able to command kickbacks. They'd have to subsist on the rock-bottom margins that are competitive with Ticketmaster.

Likewise those venues: ownership of key venues lets Ticketmaster/Live Nation force out credible rivals in important markets, and keep new ones from emerging, because again, they'd have to make a living on that paltry 1.7% AOI (or the even lower profit margins!).

As Joe Berchtold, the highest-paid CFO in America, told an analyst:

I don't think Concerts AOI per fan is a logical way to look at it. I think if you look at how we've talked about our business, we've talked about our business across the multiple pieces. So you have to look at it, what's the concerts plus sponsorship plus ticketing AOI per fan.

Berchtold is paid roughly $26,000/hour. Those words take roughly 25 seconds to utter, so that's a $7.20 explanation, but it contains a wealth of information – it's basically the DoJ's case in a nutshell.

But Stoller points out a curious fact that isn't captured here. Remember when I told you that TM/LN's NOI is $732m/year? What I didn't mention is the company's gross revenue: $16.7 billion.

When TM/LN talks about how shitty their business is, and therefore they can't be a monopoly, this is the trump card. How could a company creaming off a mere $732 million off $16.7 billion in gross revenue be a monopolist with "pricing power"?

This is where understanding corruption helps clarify our understanding and cut through the bullshit. Corruption is vastly wasteful. In order to extract $732m from $16.7b, TM/LN has to engage in a lot of wasteful and corrupt activities. They have to bribe other key players in the system, spend vast fortunes on lobbying, and generally do a lot of unproductive things with their money.

This is concentrated gains and diffuse losses. In order to command the highest salary of any American CFO, Berchtold has to cook up and maintain this process. In order to earn his $139m/year, Rapino has to play mafia don and keep everyone is his supply chain sufficiently terrorized or sufficiently greased to maintain omerta.

These two men take home a fifth of Ticketmaster's net income because they possess a rare and valuable skill. They are able to obfuscate a corrupt arrangement, enrobing it in layers of performative complexity, until the average musician, concertgoer, or lawmaker, can't understand it. Any attempt to unravel it will induce a deadly, soporific confusion. The investment industry term for his is MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over), the weaponization of complexity. A skilled MEGO artist can convince you that the pile of shit they're peddling is so large that there must be a pony under it somewhere.

Here's Stoller, de-MEGOfying the TM/LN story:

Live Nation has a giant capital intensive unprofitable division of putting on concerts, from which it skims for its real cash flow. But this leverage among different subsidiaries means that it has an incentive to push up the cost of concerts overall, not just for its own profit. This incentive operates in two different ways. One, since ticket fees are based on the price of a ticket, Live Nation seeks higher prices for tickets so it can move more cash to its Ticketmaster subsidiary. And two, since Live Nation itself gets rebates by overpaying for venues, it has the incentive to push up the cost of shows. No one can undercut Live Nation, as it’s a monopoly.

You might think that this is a lot of mental energy to expend on understanding live performances. If you're not trying to see Taylor Swift, does any of this matter?

It assuredly does. Understanding how Ticketmaster's shell-game works is critical to understanding the similar shell-games played by many other kinds of monopolists, who have wrapped their tentacles around all the other parts of our lives. As David Dayen and Lindsay Owens write for The American Prospect, the companies that avoided monopoly prosecution by ripping off suppliers have bled those suppliers dry, and now they're coming for their customers:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-03-age-of-recoupment/

From groceries to plane tickets, rent to cab rides, Amazon to Ticketmaster, we are living through the "Age of Recoupment," when the long con of lowering prices to secure monopolies flips enters it final stage: greedflating the shit out of customers, and using the monopolist's power over regulators to avoid consequences.

Today, everywhere consumers turn, whether they are shopping for groceries at the local Kroger or for plane tickets online, they are being gouged. Landlords are quietly utilizing new software to band together and raise rents. Uber has been accused of raising the price of rides when a customer’s phone battery is drained. Ticketmaster layers on additional fees as you move through the process of securing seats to your favorite artist’s upcoming show. Amazon’s secret pricing algorithm, code-named “Project Nessie,” was designed to identify products where it could raise prices, on the expectation that competitors would follow suit. Companies are forcing you into monthly subscriptions for a tube of toothpaste. Banks have crept up the price of credit, so customers who cannot afford price-gouging in their everyday transactions get a second round of price-gouging when they put purchases on credit. Expedia is using demographic and purchase history data to set hotel pricing for an audience of one: you.

When these companies end up in front of angry attorneys general, DOJ lawyers, or an FTC investigation, they'll use the Ticketmaster/Live Nation playbook to try and wriggle off the hook. They'll point to some barely-profitable (or money-losing) part of their business and say, "How could a monopolist possibly be running a business this shitty?"

If the DOJ makes its case against Ticketmaster, it will set a precedent, both in court and in policy circles, for understanding how a monopolist's corruption works. Monopolists aren't always businesses with gigantic margins. Like other criminals, their corruption can produce spectacular wealth and spectacular waste at the same time.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/03/aoi-aoi-oh/#concentrated-gains-vast-diffused-losses

[eretzyisrael]

The leading ticketing platform in sports and entertainment doesn’t seem to have a problem with Louis Farrakahn’s long history of anti-Semitism, according to a letter sent by entertainment industry heavyweights to Ticketmaster this week.

Creative Community for Peace, a leading entertainment industry trade group that promotes tolerance through the arts, sent a letter to Ticketmaster CEO Michael Rapino, expressing great concern about Ticketmaster selling tickets to Louis Farrakhan’s upcoming Saviours’ Day event on February 26h at Wintrust Arena in Chicago.

The letter, which was signed by entertainment executives Haim Saban, Sherry Lansing, singer/songwriter Diane Warren, and more than 120 other entertainment industry leaders, highlights a list of antisemitic and homophobic statements from Louis Farrakhan at past Saviours’ Day events. It urges the company to reconsider selling tickets to the event and to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, a guideline to help identify and combat anti-Jewish hate, such as that often espoused by Farrakhan.

“Mr. Farrakhan has labeled Judaism a “gutter religion;” stated that Jewish religious writings are responsible for “pedophilia, homosexuality, and sex trafficking” in America; regularly praises Hitler, calling him “a very great man;” the letter stated. “[Farrakhan] refers to Jews as insects; and falsely and outrageously claims that Jews orchestrated and dominated the African slave trade.”

Mr. Farrakhan has repeatedly invoked “Satan” when referring to the Jewish people. In his 2017 speech at Saviors’ Day, he said “Those who call themselves ‘Jews,’ who are not really Jews, but are in fact, Satan. You should learn to call them by their real name: ‘Satan.’ You are coming face-to-face with Satan, the Arch Deceiver, the enemy of God and the enemy of the Righteous.” And in 2020, he promoted violence by stating, “”Those of you who say that you are Jews, I will not even give you the honor of calling yourself Jews. You are not a Jew. You are so-called. You are Satan. It is my job now to pull the cover off of Satan. So when every Muslim sees Satan, pick up a stone.”

The letter includes additional incendiary quotes from Mr. Farrakhan over the years, highlighting his pattern of sharing antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories with his audience. It also notes the fact that there are more hate crimes per capita against Jews than any other minority and that “, providing support of any kind to this sort of hatred is not just unacceptable, but dangerous.”

CCFP Director Ari Ingel added, “Louis Farrakhan is one of the leading purveyors of antisemitism in America, as noted by the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center. His views are incredibly dangerous and we’re disappointed to see Ticketmaster enable his promulgation of hatred. We hope Mr. Rapino reconsiders, especially at a time when antisemitism continues to become more and more normalized.”

At the time of this writing, Ticketmaster CEO Michael Rapino has yet to respond to CCFP’s request.

[heavybreathingswift]

I dont even care about the tour anymore, i want to see ticketmaster fall to their fucking knees. Do you understand how angry swifties have to be to care less about about taylor swift’s ERAS tour?!!

[ourmindonmusicpodcast]

Understanding “Live Nation”: The Good, The Bad, and The Monopoly

[i-am-mr-k]

"protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is."

I've been saying this for years: they aren't coming for Lia Thomas, they are coming for Quinn (NB), they are coming for Megan Rapinoe.

[hikercarl]

The Professional Athletes I Respect the Most and Why

Daily writing promptName the professional athletes you respect the most and why.View all responses When I think about the professional athletes I respect the most, my mind naturally gravitates towards individuals who have not only excelled in their respective sports but also demonstrated qualities that extend beyond the field, court, or track. These athletes embody perseverance, humility, and a…

[wttnblog]

The 10 Best Queer Memoirs of All Time

I’m back again with another best of all time list for Pride month! This time, I’m going to be talking about the 10 best queer memoirs of all time. These memoirs oftentimes defy traditional narrative structure, mixing genres and infusing even the writing itself with a queerness just as palpable as that of the writers themselves. Strong disclaimer that this list only includes books I’ve actually…

[fandom]

Athletes

Everyone on this list is good at two-legged sports except for #30.

Mason Mount +19

Christen Press +1

Yuzuru Hanyu +32

Tobin Heath +2

Sidney Crosby +16

Roger Federer

Serena Williams

Ben Chilwell +9

Leah Williamson +25

Shoma Uno

Matthew Tkachuk

Evgeni Malkin

Rafael Nadal

Apayauq Reitan

Sam Kerr

Leon Goretzka +31

Kristie Mewis +9

Cristiano Ronaldo

Nathan Chen

Ashlyn Harris +2

Vivianne Miedema

Ali Krieger -6

Tyson Jost +19

Mat Barzal -14

Michael Jordan

Jack Hughes

Tyler Seguin +3

Kobe Bryant

Lionel Messi

Rich Strike

Manuel Neuer

Mitch Marner

Kamila Valieva

John Stones

Pernille Harder -4

Yuma Kagiyama

Magdalena Eriksson +3

Tony Hawk

Quinn Hughes -6

Connor McDavid

Emily Sonnett +9

Travis Konecny-1

Trent Alexander Arnold -28

Megan Rapinoe -16

Lebron James

Jack Grealish -1

Auston Matthews -23

Donovan Carrillo

Brock Boeser -24

Rose Lavelle

The number in italics indicates how many spots a name moved up or down from the previous year. Bolded names weren’t on the list last year.

[buggledy]

I wasn't doing great mentally anyway (I never am, but I been going through something these last couple weeks) but it's like a part of me died. I hate this shit. I buy a ticket to see an artist I admire, one of my favorite if not my favorite artist (especially who's currently touring and I haven't already seen), and I get labelled as a scalper? With no chance to appeal or anything? They just go off and sell my ticket for probably like another $50 more than I paid for it? Is this not just *encouraging* scalping? What a sick fuckin joke. I hope some day Congress finally dissolves their shitty extortionist monopoly.

Tfw your Mitski ticket gets refunded because the Ticketmaster algorithm determined you were sus and the actual human Ticketmaster employees say "Yeah we don't know why it did that, tough shit, maybe try to buy it again" but the whole tour's sold out

[jaywritesrps]

Since I'm on both fandons (sophia and woso) I am going to try to explain a couple of things:

Sophia never followed Ali Krieger. As she never followed other soccer stars either, such as Kelley O'Hara and Emily Sonnett, for example.

Sophia said countless times that cheating is a deal breaker to her. She was cheated on before, most famous was Chad Michael Murray, who was married with her when cheated with on her allegedly with Paris Hilton.

There were rumors before about Ashlyn cheating on Ali, but most of them were fake, made by some woso fans.

Ashlyn spoke before about her partying habits when things are bad as a escapism from her problems.

Sophia is friends with Abby Wambach and met Rapinoe and the USWNT through that connection.

Sophia indeed split from her husband, but by the little she spoke about it, it was more due their own issues than about sexuality or anything like it. Deux moi and People confirmed that the split had nothing to do with sexuality.

The most accepted guess about Sophia's divorce it was due Grant leaving her sick in London while he was partying and tripping with his pals, rather than taking care of her.

According to Pagesix, Ashlyn claimed they were "Irretrievably Broken". This is used when the couple tried all they could to fix it, but decided that it can't be fix. And since they already had a custody plan and an agreement on their finances, it safe to guess this is indeed the case.

Although she used to attend on Pride, kissed a lot of girls on screen, and is an open lgbt ally, Sophia claimed to be straight.

The rumor about Sophia and Ashlyn started on twitter, cause in the last couple of weeks Sophia and Ash are hanging out a lot. Also Ashlyn and Ali relationship has been weird for a couple of weeks too. So some unknown person started spreading this.

With all that being said, here's a theory of what probably happened:

Sophia and Ashlyn are friends. Sophia talked about her husband, Ashlyn reflected on that and decided to take the same road, since she saw herself in the same place for a while. Ali agreed and each on follow their path.

[Edit:] someone pointed out that Sophia and Ali used to follow each other, but have unfollowed each other for a while. Also Florida state has just two categories for divorce. But still, everything stays the same. It still doesn't looks like Ash and Sophia are nothing more than friends and that it was a consensual divorce due the stuff talked in the post.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Early Sunday morning, the USWNT exited the World Cup in the first round of the knockout stage, losing to an overmatched Sweden team on penalty kicks at the conclusion of a 0-0 tie. It marked the worst finish for the American women’s team in World Cup history.

Our national team has been ranked No. 1 in the world since June 2017 and for all but 10 months since March 2008. The squad has never been ranked lower than No. 2. In the Round of 16, Sweden conquered a dynasty.

Close observers were not surprised. The team has been in mental decay since Carli Lloyd retired (2020) and corporate media anointed the purple-haired Rapinoe as the unquestioned face of American women’s soccer.

For the last three years, the 38-year-old winger has used the team’s spotlight to grow the Rapinoe brand. The game, the competition, and representing national honor all took a back seat to self-promotion, virtue-signaling, so-called social activism centered around the BLM-LGBTQ-Alphabet Mafia, and expressing Trump derangement.

Rapinoe’s handlers and major corporations partnered with corporate media to cast her as “The Great Gay Hope,” the alternative-lifestyle Muhammad Ali.

Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Carli Lloyd, and Alex Morgan were all better players than Rapinoe. But none of them can match Rapinoe’s knack for drawing attention to herself for sleeping with women — her superpower, the behavior that makes her a legendary icon.

To no surprise, the strategy backfired. Rapinoe acted as a locker-room cancer. She diminished the importance of competition. Throughout the World Cup, the U.S. women failed to play with passion and precision. In four games, they scored four goals and won just one match.

On Sunday, with a chance to off Sweden with a penalty kick, Rapinoe missed the entire net wide right. She smirked and laughed in embarrassment. Two other U.S. women missed their kicks as well. But those women earned their spots on the roster. Rapinoe was on the team and on the field because of social pressure and a never-ending marketing campaign. She hadn’t earned the right to fail. The opportunity was bestowed on her.

When asked for her greatest memory of her “legendary” career, she pointed to the lawsuit she and her teammates filed against the U.S. Soccer Federation over alleged pay inequality. Gender pay inequality is a myth and a lie, no different from other popular corporate media narratives like climate change and the alleged genocidal homicide of unarmed black men.

But the truth is irrelevant in the making of an Alphabet Mafia icon. Megan Rapinoe is the George Floyd of soccer. Racism and sexism are the only things that prevented them from being president and vice president of the United States.

Or maybe Rapinoe is just another narcissistic, greedy, entitled celebrity.

Could you imagine Joe Montana or Michael Jordan summarizing their careers by referencing a contract dispute?

Rapinoe is a fraud. She’s the Colin Kaepernick of soccer. Her attitude poisoned the women’s national soccer team. Let’s hope her side effects don’t linger.

[dear-indies]

full list of biden letter 2:

Aaron Bay-Schuck Aaron Sorkin Adam & Jackie Sandler Adam Goodman Adam Levine Alan Grubman Alex Aja Alex Edelman Alexandra Shiva Ali Wentworth Alison Statter Allan Loeb Alona Tal Amy Chozick Amy Pascal Amy Schumer Amy Sherman Palladino Andrew Singer Andy Cohen Angela Robinson Anthony Russo Antonio Campos Ari Dayan Ari Greenburg Arik Kneller Aron Coleite Ashley Levinson Asif Satchu Aubrey Plaza Barbara Hershey Barry Diller Barry Levinson Barry Rosenstein Beau Flynn Behati Prinsloo Bella Thorne Ben Stiller Ben Turner Ben Winston Ben Younger Billy Crystal Blair Kohan Bob Odenkirk Bobbi Brown Bobby Kotick Brad Falchuk Brad Slater Bradley Cooper Bradley Fischer Brett Gelman Brian Grazer Bridget Everett Brooke Shields Bruna Papandrea Cameron Curtis Casey Neistat Cazzie David

Charles Roven Chelsea Handler Chloe Fineman Chris Fischer Chris Jericho Chris Rock Christian Carino Cindi Berger Claire Coffee Colleen Camp Constance Wu Courteney Cox Craig Silverstein Dame Maureen Lipman Dan Aloni Dan Rosenweig Dana Goldberg Dana Klein Daniel Palladino Danielle Bernstein Danny Cohen Danny Strong Daphne Kastner David Alan Grier David Baddiel David Bernad David Chang David Ellison David Geffen David Gilmour & David Goodman David Joseph David Kohan David Lowery David Oyelowo David Schwimmer Dawn Porter Dean Cain Deborah Lee Furness Deborah Snyder Debra Messing Diane Von Furstenberg Donny Deutsch Doug Liman Douglas Chabbott Eddy Kitsis Edgar Ramirez Eli Roth Elisabeth Shue Elizabeth Himelstein Embeth Davidtz Emma Seligman Emmanuelle Chriqui Eric Andre Erik Feig Erin Foster Eugene Levy Evan Jonigkeit Evan Winiker Ewan McGregor Francis Benhamou Francis Lawrence Fred Raskin Gabe Turner Gail Berman Gal Gadot Gary Barber Gene Stupinski Genevieve Angelson Gideon Raff Gina Gershon Grant Singer Greg Berlanti Guy Nattiv Guy Oseary Gwyneth Paltrow Hannah Fidell Hannah Graf Harlan Coben Harold Brown Harvey Keitel Henrietta Conrad Henry Winkler Holland Taylor Howard Gordon Iain Morris Imran Ahmed Inbar Lavi Isla Fisher Jack Black Jackie Sandler Jake Graf Jake Kasdan James Brolin James Corden Jamie Ray Newman Jaron Varsano Jason Biggs & Jenny Mollen Biggs Jason Blum Jason Fuchs Jason Reitman Jason Segel Jason Sudeikis JD Lifshitz Jeff Goldblum Jeff Rake Jen Joel Jeremy Piven Jerry Seinfeld Jesse Itzler Jesse Plemons Jesse Sisgold Jessica Biel Jessica Elbaum Jessica Seinfeld Jill Littman Jimmy Carr Jody Gerson

Joe Hipps Joe Quinn Joe Russo Joe Tippett Joel Fields Joey King John Landgraf John Slattery Jon Bernthal Jon Glickman Jon Hamm Jon Liebman Jonathan Baruch Jonathan Groff Jonathan Marc Sherman Jonathan Ross Jonathan Steinberg Jonathan Tisch Jonathan Tropper Jordan Peele Josh Brolin Josh Charles Josh Goldstine Josh Greenstein Josh Grode Judd Apatow Judge Judy Sheindlin Julia Garner Julia Lester Julianna Margulies Julie Greenwald Julie Rudd Juliette Lewis Justin Theroux Justin Timberlake Karen Pollock Karlie Kloss Katy Perry Kelley Lynch Kevin Kane Kevin Zegers Kirsten Dunst Kitao Sakurai KJ Steinberg Kristen Schaal Kristin Chenoweth Lana Del Rey Laura Dern Laura Pradelska Lauren Schuker Blum Laurence Mark Laurie David Lea Michele Lee Eisenberg Leo Pearlman Leslie Siebert Liev Schreiber Limor Gott Lina Esco Liz Garbus Lizanne Rosenstein Lizzie Tisch Lorraine Schwartz Lynn Harris Lyor Cohen Madonna Mandana Dayani Mara Buxbaum Marc Webb Marco Perego Maria Dizzia Mark Feuerstein Mark Foster Mark Scheinberg Mark Shedletsky Martin Short Mary Elizabeth Winstead Mathew Rosengart Matt Lucas Matt Miller Matthew Bronfman Matthew Hiltzik Matthew Weiner Matti Leshem Max Mutchnik Maya Lasry Meaghan Oppenheimer Melissa Zukerman Michael Aloni Michael Ellenberg Michael Green Michael Rapino Michael Rappaport Michael Weber Michelle Williams Mike Medavoy Mila Kunis Mimi Leder Modi Wiczyk Molly Shannon Nancy Josephson Natasha Leggero

Neil Blair Neil Druckmann Nicola Peltz Nicole Avant Nina Jacobson Noa Kirel Noa Tishby Noah Oppenheim Noah Schnapp Noreena Hertz Odeya Rush Olivia Wilde Oran Zegman Orlando Bloom Pasha Kovalev Pattie LuPone Paul & Julie Rudd Paul Haas Paul Pflug Peter Traugott Polly Sampson Rachel Riley Rafi Marmor Ram Bergman Raphael Margulies Rebecca Angelo Rebecca Mall Regina Spektor Reinaldo Marcus Green Rich Statter Richard Jenkins Richard Kind Rick Hoffman Rick Rosen Rita Ora Rob Rinder Robert Newman Roger Birnbaum Roger Green Rosie O’Donnell Ross Duffer Ryan Feldman Sacha Baron Cohen Sam Levinson Sam Trammell Sara Foster Sarah Baker Sarah Bremner Sarah Cooper Sarah Paulson Sarah Treem Scott Braun Scott Braun Scott Neustadter Scott Tenley Sean Combs Seth Meyers Seth Oster Shannon Watts Shari Redstone Sharon Jackson Sharon Stone Shauna Perlman Shawn Levy Sheila Nevins Shira Haas Simon Sebag Montefiore Simon Tikhman Skylar Astin Stacey Snider Stephen Fry Steve Agee Steve Rifkind Sting & Trudie Styler Susanna Felleman Susie Arons Taika Waititi Thomas Kail Tiffany Haddish Todd Lieberman Todd Moscowitz Todd Waldman Tom Freston Tom Werner Tomer Capone Tracy Ann Oberman Trudie Styler Tyler James Williams Tyler Perry Vanessa Bayer Veronica Grazer Veronica Smiley Whitney Wolfe Herd

Will Ferrell Will Graham Yamanieka Saunders Yariv Milchan Ynon Kreiz Zack Snyder Zoe Saldana Zoey Deutch Zosia Mamet

[are-they-z]

Supporters of #NoHostageLeftBehind Open Letter to Joe Biden - Part 2/2

Gabe Turner

Gail Berman

Gary Barber

Genevieve Angelson

Gideon Raff

Grant Singer

Greg Berlanti

Guy Nattiv

Hannah Fidell

Hannah Graf

Harlan Coben

Harold Brown

Henrietta Conrad

Howard Gordon

Iain Morris

Imran Ahmed

Inbar Lavi

Jackie Sandler

Jake Graf

Jake Kasdan

Jamie Ray Newman

Jaron Varsano

Jason Fuchs

Jason Biggs & Jenny Mollen Biggs

Jason Segel

JD Lifshitz

Jeff Rake

Jen Joel

Jeremy Piven

Jesse Itzler

Jesse Sisgold

Jill Littman

Jody Gerson

Joe Hipps

Joe Quinn

Joe Russo

Joe Tippett

Joel Fields

John Landgraf

Jon Bernthal

Jon Glickman

Jon Liebman

Jonathan Baruch

Jonathan Groff

Jonathan Tropper

Jonathan Marc Sherman

Jonathan Steinberg

Jonathan Tisch

Josh Goldstine

Josh Greenstein

Josh Grode

Julia Lester

Julie Greenwald

Karen Pollock

Kelley Lynch

Kevin Kane

Kevin Zegers

Kitao Sakurai

KJ Steinberg

Laura Pradelska

Lauren Schuker Blum

Laurence Mark

Laurie David

Lee Eisenberg

Leslie Siebert

Leo Pearlman

Limor Gott

Lina Esco

Liz Garbus

Lizanne Rosenstein

Lizzie Tisch

Lorraine Schwartz

Lynn Harris

Lyor Cohen

Mandana Dayani

Maria Dizzia

Mara Buxbaum

Marc Webb

Marco Perego

Mark Feuerstein

Mark Shedletsky

Mark Scheinberg

Mathew Rosengart

Matt Lucas

Matt Miller

Matthew Bronfman

Matthew Hiltzik

Matti Leshem

Dame Maureen Lipman

Max Mutchnik

Maya Lasry

Meaghan Oppenheimer

Melissa Zukerman

Michael Ellenberg

Michael Aloni

Michael Green

Michael Rapino

Michael Weber

Mike Medavoy

Mimi Leder

Modi Wiczyk

Nancy Josephson

Natasha Leggero

Neil Blair

Neil Druckmann

Nicole Avant

Nina Jacobson

Noa Kirel

Noah Oppenheim

Noreena Hertz

Odeya Rush

Oran Zegman

Pasha Kovalev

Paul Haas

Paul Pflug

Peter Traugott

Rachel Riley

Rafi Marmor

Ram Bergman

Raphael Margulies

Rebecca Angelo

Rebecca Mall

Reinaldo Marcus Green

Rich Statter

Richard Kind

Rick Hoffman

Rick Rosen

Robert Newman

Rob Rinder

Roger Birnbaum

Roger Green

Rosie O'Donnell

Ryan Feldman

Sam Trammell

Sarah Baker

Sarah Bremner

Sarah Treem

Scott Tenley

Seth Oster

Scott Braun

Scott Neustadter

Shannon Watts

Shari Redstone

Sharon Jackson

Shauna Perlman

Shawn Levy

Sheila Nevins

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Simon Tikhman

Skylar Astin

Stacey Snider

Stephen Fry

Steve Agee

Steve Rifkind

Susanna Felleman

Susie Arons

Todd Lieberman

Todd Moscowitz

Todd Waldman

Tom Freston

Tom Werner

Tomer Capone

Tracy Ann Oberman

Trudie Styler

Tyler James Williams

Vanessa Bayer

Veronica Grazer

Veronica Smiley

Whitney Wolfe Herd

Will Graham

Yamanieka Saunders

Yariv Milchan

Ynon Kreiz

[seasurfacefullofclouds1]

Irving wants his $ from unregulated dynamic pricing. Jeff wants his $ from unregulated dynamic pricing. Harry wants his $ from unregulated dynamic pricing. Michael Rapino wants his $ from unregulated dynamic pricing. Govt oversight means lower profits. Remember Irving was the one who testified that a Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger/monopoly would help consumers and lower concert ticket prices and then he laughed all the way to the bank.

The sponsor of the Boss Act, Rep Bill Pascrell [D - NJ] has been in Azoff’s crosshairs for years.

Government regulations are bad for corporate monopolies.

[mariacallous]

Ticketmaster is facing increased scrutiny after bungling sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. When the presale began November 15, fans found themselves in virtual lines of thousands — if they were lucky enough to get a Verified Fan presale code — to buy tickets, some of which were significantly marked up. Ticketmaster’s platform eventually crashed, delaying the presale. The general sale, planned for November 18, has now been canceled by Ticketmaster. Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, announced a consumer-protection and antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster after the failures, citing complaints to his office. “I would hope the company is doing everything it can to make sure the customers, from today forward, have a much smoother and fairer experience,” Skrmetti said during a press conference, per Nashville’s WSMV 4. North Carolina’s attorney general, Josh Stein, has since announced his office is also investigating Ticketmaster. Multiple members of Congress have levied renewed criticism against Ticketmaster’s merger with Live Nation.

Ticketmaster addressed the presale issues with a statement on the “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets, thanking fans for being patient. In response to a request for comment on the inquiries into Ticketmaster and Live Nation, a spokesperson directed Vulture to a page titled “The Taylor Swift On Sale Explained.” The page details the presale process for the tickets, focusing on Swift’s popularity. “The biggest venues and artists turn to us because we have the leading ticketing technology in the world — that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and clearly for Taylor’s on sale it wasn’t,” Ticketmaster said. The company later cited “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand” in canceling the general sale. Greg Maffei, the CEO of Live Nation’s parent company, Liberty Media Corporation, told CNBC he is “sympathetic” to fans but blamed issues on “the massive demand that Taylor Swift has.” He added that Live Nation is “working hard on this.” Both Maffei and Ticketmaster claimed there was enough demand to fill 900 stadiums. “While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on,” Ticketmaster said on the page.

Meanwhile, Senator Amy Klobuchar, who chairs a Senate subcommittee on antitrust and consumer protection, sent a letter to the CEO of Live Nation, Michael Rapino, over the concern “that Ticketmaster continues to abuse its market positions.” Klobuchar wrote that she has “serious concerns about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers,” citing Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with Live Nation, which she was “skeptical” of at the time. “You said that you were ‘confident this plan will work,’” she wrote to him of hearings over the merger. “It appears that your confidence was misplaced.” Klobuchar requested further answers from Rapino over Ticketmaster’s operations.

Klobuchar’s colleagues in Congress have spoken out against Ticketmaster. Representative David Cicilline, who chairs the House’s antitrust subcommittee, tweeted that the Swift-tour issue was “a symptom of a larger problem,” calling Live Nation and Ticketmaster “an unchecked monopoly.” (He and other representatives had called for an investigation into Live Nation last year.) Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that the merger “should never have been approved.” In his response to the ticketing issues, Maffei nearly admitted Live Nation had a monopoly, explaining on CNBC that AEG, a rival promoter that is handling Swift’s tour, still decided to sell tickets on Ticketmaster. (Five of Swift’s 52 shows, in Arizona and Texas, are being sold by SeatGeek.) “We are, in reality, the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” Maffei claimed. Separately, President Joe Biden recently said his administration would be targeting “junk fees” in various sectors “like processing fees for concert tickets.”

Swift is just the latest subject of Ticketmaster’s ticketing issues. Earlier this year, the company was criticized over its “Platinum” pricing, in which some tickets spike dramatically in response to demand, for tours by Bruce Springsteen and Blink-182. Some artists have joined the recent criticisms against Ticketmaster, including Zach Bryan, a country singer-songwriter who’s become a popular touring act. On Twitter, Bryan recently called for “a serious change in the system,” and he has alluded to making future touring decisions around Ticketmaster. For now, Godspeed to the millions of Swifties who were still holding out for tickets.

[adafruit]

Ticketmaster and Adafruit Announce Groundbreaking Merger, TicketFruit, to Revolutionize the Purchase of Raspberry Pi 4s

New York, NY - April 1, 2023 - Today, global ticketing and event technology platform Ticketmaster and electronics manufacturer Adafruit announced their plans to merge, with a new company, named TicketFruit, marking a pivotal moment in the technology and entertainment industries. The merger is set to create unprecedented opportunities for consumers, making it easier than ever to access the popular Raspberry Pi 4 and other innovative products.

This unique partnership between the ticketing giant and the renowned electronics company will offer consumers a seamless experience, integrating cutting-edge technology into the event ticketing process. The merger will also improve the distribution and availability of the Raspberry Pi 4, a popular single-board computer widely used for educational and hobbyist purposes.

"We are excited about this unprecedented merger with Adafruit," said Michael Rapino, CEO of Ticketmaster. "By combining our expertise in event technology with Adafruit's dedication to creating innovative products, we aim to redefine the consumer experience. This partnership will not only make it much easier to get a Raspberry Pi 4, but also offer new and exciting ways to use this versatile device in the entertainment industry."

Limor Fried, CEO of Adafruit, echoed Rapino's enthusiasm, stating, "This collaboration with Ticketmaster opens up endless possibilities to create transformative experiences for our customers. By leveraging Ticketmaster's extensive network, we can now bring the Raspberry Pi 4 to a much wider audience and introduce unique applications for this powerful platform. We are committed to breaking boundaries and exploring new horizons in technology and entertainment."

The merger is expected to be completed within the next few months, after which customers can anticipate a more streamlined process for obtaining the Raspberry Pi 4, as well as other innovative products from Adafruit. The combined company will continue to focus on providing exceptional customer experiences and creating new opportunities for technological advancement in the entertainment and electronics sectors.