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Comment by mhb | Hacker News Reader

Taylor Swift has a net worth over $400M. Why can't she rent venues?

Crazy enough, I used to own a nightclub in San Francisco SOMA district.

She can. The issue is that she will overwhelm them and that becomes a public safety issue. Police, fire dept, etc... they all get involved. Fact is that the venues large enough to hold her are ALL owned or at least have some sort of connection to Live Nation.

It goes deeper than that though. One time, `Bone Thugs and Harmony` were in town for a show on Saturday (at a LN venue). Friday night, they wanted to perform to a smaller audience of their core fans, so we agreed to host them at the last minute.

We made a radio spot to let people know. The text that was read got modified at the very end to say "the show has sold out" (I even have a recording of it somewhere on my computer). We didn't put that in there. It was wild, nobody showed up and we were out of $50k. Who modified it? Well, LN owns the radio stations too. They were pissed that BTH would even consider playing at a non-LN club.

I couldn't afford to sue LN, so we just ate the loss. It sucked and did some real damage to my business.

Did the radio ad account for most of that cost, if you don't mind my asking? Still pretty expensive despite the changed ad landscape huh

We paid some large amount to the band. I think it was about $30-40k. Then we lost on staffing and other costs. The radio spot was relatively cheap... I forget how much.

We could have easily made the $50k+ in bar sales + tickets + share of merch sales. It was a last minute event on a night we didn't have otherwise filled, so breaking even was fine.

Instead, we ended up in debt. Fuck Live Nation (at the time it was just Clear Channel). I hope this Taylor thing blows the doors off their monopoly.

The venues have a lock-in with the Ticketmaster monopoly, so she - and every other artist, such as Pearl Jam in the 90s (as described in the article) - would still need to go through them

She might not have $10-30m liquid sloshing around her couch cushions.

And even if the problem were fixed for TS events, what about all the other ever present ticketmaster rip-offs?

> She might not have $10-30m liquid sloshing around her couch cushions.

I have no doubt that she could equity finance it considering she can guarantee sell-outs at every venue she plays.

> And even if the problem were fixed for TS events, what about all the other ever present ticketmaster rip-offs?

This is the real problem. The biggest artists doing this might hurt Ticketmaster's bottom line, but there are a ton of smaller venues that book artists that don't have the guarantee of selling out and can't just decide to self-finance tours on public grounds...

You're assuming TS cares. She could have easily done a lot to fix this. Restrict resale of tickets. Price tickets higher. Hand out specific codes to only people in her fan club to buy tickets.

She made hundreds of millions on this tour. Its funny you all think that maximizing her profit wasn't the goal here

She actually could do this. Buy her own PA system and just tour country fair grounds. Her core fans would absolutely adore this.

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