Taylor Swift vs. Ronald Reagan: the Ticketmaster story

This special episode of Decoder dives deep into Taylor Swift, Ticketmaster, and how a handful of policy changes in the 1980s led to one firm so thoroughly dominating the live events business in the United States that Congress held a hearing in 2023 because Taylor Swift fans were upset about antitrust law. That sentence is wild. We’re going to unpack all of this with the help of some experts.

And since it’s a special episode, we’re trying something new. We produced a video you can watch in this post or on YouTube. Let us know what you think.

Okay, Ticketmaster and antitrust. Here we go.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): I’d now like to turn to the subject of today’s hearings. The...

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