Lawmakers grill ticketing industry after Taylor Swift concert fiasco

Ticketmaster’s mishandling of Taylor Swift’s concert ticket sale in November earned its parent company a spot in the hot seat at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Tuesday hearing.

Lawmakers grilled Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold on the company’s market practices, with some claiming that it is monopolizing the market and hurting customers.

Here are the highlights from the hearing, not counting the lawmakers’ random references to Taylor Swift’s lyrics:

Live Nation blames it largely on bots: From his opening statement to responses to senators’ questions, Berchtold stressed the problem of bots and industrial scalping of tickets, which he claims also caused the Swift tickets fiasco.

Republicans, Democrats, artists and others all appeared to agree Live Nation is the anti-hero: Clyde Lawrence, an artist on the witness panel, explained how the company acts as a promoter, a venue and the ticketing company, which can eat into performing artists’ revenues while also escalating ticket price for consumers. Bipartisan agreement on any issue is hard to come by, but as Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal noted, Live Nation managed to bring them all together.

No easy answers: The ability to resell tickets can be a useful for customers who need to change plans. But it can also help prop up the scalping industry. With that in mind, lawmakers discussed whether restricting the ability to transfer tickets would help. Live Nation was in favor of this, but the CEO of a rival platform, SeatGeek, said this might only entrench Live Nation’s dominance, as it holds the kind of market share that would force consumers to solely transact there in the absence of any other resale market option.

A losing ticket for consumers: When there is less competition in a market, there is lesser incentive for businesses to innovate, experts say Customers pay the price for alleged monopolistic acts with higher ticket prices and fees, lower quality and less choice and less innovation, antitrust expert Kathleen Bradish told lawmakers.

Today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the live entertainment ticketing industry, where senators heard from industry officials, antitrust experts and even one musician, just wrapped up.

The hearing came about two months after Ticketmaster’s mishandling of the sale of Taylor Swift concert tickets in November.

While Swift herself wasn’t there, her lyrics certainly were. Senators and witnesses alike peppered in references to the artist’s catalogue throughout the hearing.

Here are some of the highlights:

At the Senate Judiciary Committee, lawmakers and experts are discussing the issue of ticket transferability and whether that is hurting or benefitting consumers in the ticketing market.

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana asked witnesses on the hearing panel if making tickets non-transferable would help in capping the price of the ticket and weeding out the issue of bots, which would in turn benefit customers.

While Live Nation President Joe Berchtold supported the suggestion, antitrust expert Kathleen Bradish said such a solution wouldn’t get to the heart of the matter because it doesn’t solve the competition issue.

“If there were competition, if we solve the competition issue here, then customers will get what they want,” she told lawmakers.

SeatGeek CEO Jack Groetzinger echoed Bradish, and said that in an industry that already lacks competition, “reducing transferability just exacerbates the problem.”

“A related issue is if the incumbent were to allow transferability but only on its own platform,” he added. “It’s a way to force all consumer data and all transaction fees onto that platform.”

Another expert on the panel, Sal Nuzzo, also disagreed with Kennedy’s proposed solution, saying that if a customer buys a ticket, they should be able to “transfer that ticket at the market rate.”

The secondary market, Nuzzo argued, also allows smaller or growing artists “the ability to fill those venues” especially when it comes to people who purchased the ticket but are unable to show up for individual reasons.

When Sen. Josh Hawley asked Live Nation’s Berchtold why the executive thinks restricting the ability to transfer tickets would help the customer, he pointed to bots.

“Tickets are often underpriced by the artists because they want to deliver value to the fans. That creates a $5 billion opportunity a year in the United States for the industrial scalping of tickets using bots … and resell them on the secondary (market,)” he said, arguing that this illegal activity is aided by the ease of ticket transfer option.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the live entertainment ticketing industry is ongoing, and so far, senators and witnesses alike have name-dropped some big acts in their questions and testimony.

Here’s who has been mentioned so far:

Singer-songwriter Clyde Lawrence offered a wish list to lawmakers on the changes he would like to see in the ticket industry:

A bigger share of merchandise sales: Live Nation and other promoters typically take 20% or more from the gross merchandise sales in a night for “providing the real estate,” Lawrence says. “But we’re providing all of the customers … how come we don’t get any of the bar sales?” Expansion of off-platform ticketing and ticketing choice Caps on fees Greater transparency on settlement sheets at the end of a show

Fred Rosen, the longtime former CEO of Ticketmaster, defended the company he helped build and described it as the “fall guy” in an interview with CNN on Tuesday, amid a hearing into the company’s Taylor Swift ticketing fiasco.

“Ticketmaster has to do what the acts and the promoters want, and Ticketmaster becomes the fall guy for all of this,” Rosen said in an interview on “At This Hour” with Kate Bolduan.

He went on to defend Ticketmaster’s size, saying that being bigger “creates issues when people think you’re taking advantage.” He added: “The fact of the matter is, we created it to take the heat for everybody, and so you become what I call, you know, the ‘scheduled whipping boy.’”

“Anybody who’s not sitting in Ticketmasters’ position is, of course, they’re going to complain,” he said. “But my view is make a better system and compete, and if you’re better, you’ll beat the company, and if you’re worse, you’ll complain.”

Rosen said if he were still at the company, he would recommend there be some kind of “circuit breaker” in place to shut down sales when demand is as unprecedented as it was for the Swift tickets.

“The system has to shut off so that you can have an orderly distribution of tickets,” he said, “and I think part of the problem is that because of the emotion that’s connected in a concert sale, no one wants to deal with the logic of this.” 

He also said he doesn’t think all of the tickets should have been put on sale at the same time, “but it’s my understanding that’s what the act wanted.”

Republican Sen. John Kennedy blasted Live Nation for the Taylor Swift ticketing meltdown and called on executives to be held accountable.

“I am not against big, per say. I am against dumb,” Kennedy of Louisiana said to a top Live Nation exec. “The way your company handled ticket sales for Ms. Swift was a debacle.”

Kennedy added that whoever at Live Nation was in charge of the incident “ought to be fired.”

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Live Nation has managed to do the unthinkable: bridge partisan divides in Washington.

“I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement: You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause,” Blumenthal said to Joe Berchtold, the president and CFO of Ticketmaster parent Live Nation.

“May I suggest, respectfully, that unfortunately your approach today in this hearing is going to solidify that cooperation,” Blumenthal said. 

The Connecticut Democrat argued Live Nation is essentially arguing “it’s not us, it’s everyone but us” despite the fact that the company is “the 800-pound gorilla here.”

He added: “Look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m the problem. It’s me.’”

Kathleen Bradish, vice president for legal advocacy at the American Antitrust Institute, told lawmakers at a Senate hearing that the lack of competition in the live entertainment industry results in consumers having the pay higher prices.

Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an example of “a very traditional monopoly” and also “a 21st century digital player” like other online platforms, she said Tuesday.

“Its dominance in markets up and down the live entertainment supply chain creates the incentive and the ability to limit competition and protect its market position,” she explained.

On the concert side, it excludes “smaller or independent concert promoters and venues. In digital ticketing, it includes excluding ticket resellers and brokers who provide important competition via the secondary ticketing market,” she said.

A top Live Nation executive sparred with lawmakers and other witnesses Tuesday over the extent of the company’s ability to control the service fees that consumers pay on top of base ticket prices.

Live Nation CFO Joe Berchtold defended the company from suggestions that its dominance has allowed for soaring fees, citing data from the market intelligence firm Pollstar showing that Live Nation controls about 200 out of approximately 4,000 venues in the United States, or about 5%.

“Are they the biggest [venues]?” asked Sen. Dick Durbin.

“No sir, they are generally not the biggest,” Berchtold responded. “The biggest tend to be the sports venues, the arenas, the stadiums controlled by the sports teams or the owners of the sports teams.”

The venues controlled by Live Nation set fees that are “consistent with the other venues in the marketplace,” Berchtold added, reiterating that service fees are set by individual venue operators, not Ticketmaster.

Singer-songwriter Clyde Lawrence testified that despite Berchtold’s claim, venues typically profess not to know what the service fees on tickets will be.

“We definitely ask venues before [a show] what the fees are going to be,” Lawrence testified. “We ask that question to the venues and they say, ‘Not only do we not choose what it is, we don’t even know what it is. We can’t even tell you what it’s going to be.’ So I don’t know where the answer lies, but no one’s taking responsibility.”

“Typically with Ticketmaster, we’ll see a 40%-ish or closer to 50% fee added on top” of the base ticket price, Lawrence added.

In his opening remarks at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, singer-songwriter Clyde Lawrence explained how a fan’s ticket money would be shared between a hypothetical concert played at a venue owned and operated by Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster.

“A fan’s ticket money could be listed at $30, but Ticketmaster tags on a 40% fee, so the fan pays $42. However, the band’s share is a mere $12, with not a cent from Ticketmaster’s added fee,” he said.

“And for the record, we’ve had them go as high as 82%,” Lawrence said. “As with promotion, if an artist plays at a Live Nation venue, then the artist has no choice but to have the show ticketed by Ticketmaster. To be clear, we have absolutely zero say or visibility in how much these fees would be. We find out the same way as everyone else by logging on to Ticketmaster once the show already goes on sale.”

While Live Nation’s concert organizing costs are accounted for, the band still needs to pay for its tour cost, Lawrence explained.

Lawrence is part of an eight-member band called “Lawrence,” which he says is a group of “seasoned artists who have toured extensively over seven years, starting with empty bars, working our way up to headlining sold-out shows for thousands of people and seeing our music chart on top 40 radio.”

Lawrence has composed music for motion pictures, including the Disney+ holiday comedy movie “Noelle.” He also told lawmakers that the reality of being in this career has forced him to “embrace the entrepreneurial aspects of pursuing careers as artists.”

In his opening remarks at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Clyde Lawrence, singer-songwriter and member of the band Lawrence, explained how a fan’s ticket money would be shared between a hypothetical concert played at a venue owned and operated by Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster.

“Live Nation and Ticketmaster often acts as three things at the same time — the promoter, the venue and the ticketing company,” he said Tuesday.

Lawrence described a hypothetical sold-out show at a Live Nation-owned and Live Nation-operated venue.

“When an artist plays these venues, they are required to use Live Nation as the promoter. Far from simply advertising, the promoter coordinates and pays the upfront costs to put together a concert, such as renting and staffing and the venue and striking a deal with the performer. Since both our pay and theirs is a share of the show’s profits, we should be true partners aligned in our incentives — keep costs low while ensuring the best fan experience,” he said. “But with Live Nation not only acting as the promoter, but also the owner and operator of the venue, it seriously complicates these incentives.”

In negotiating, artists have no leverage over Live Nation, he said.

“At the end of the show, costs will have eaten into most of the money made that evening, and due to Live Nation’s control across the industry, we have practically no leveraging in negotiating with them. If they want to take 10% of the revenues in facility fees, they can and have. If they want to charge $30,000 for the ‘house nut’ (the fixed fee the venue takes), they can and have. And if they want to charge us $250,000 for a stack of 10 clean towels, they can and have,” he told lawmakers.

After these costs have been accounted for, Lawrence said the remainder of the show revenue is split between Live Nation and the band. He explained why this is a problem:

“In the world where the promoter and the venue are not affiliated with each other, we can trust that the promoter will work to get the best deal from the venue. However, in this case, the promoter and the venue are part of the same corporate entity. So these line items are essentially Live Nation negotiating to pay itself. Does that seem fair?” he asked.

Tuesday’s hearing could give the Justice Department significant political support for an eventual antitrust suit against Live Nation, after multiple lawmakers and witnesses backed intervention against the company.

That appetite for action dovetails with the current DOJ’s assertive approach to enforcement. The head of the antitrust division, Jonathan Kanter, has pushed to bring more lawsuits to trial, and more lawsuits advocating unconventional legal theories.

On Tuesday, lawmakers repeatedly questioned the US government’s past handling of Live Nation, which involved a legally binding consent agreement that allowed the company to merge with Ticketmaster so long as the combined company abided by a number of behavioral conditions.

A 2019 Justice Department review found that Live Nation was not meeting its commitments under the order, but instead of suing, the Department modified the agreement and extended it for another five years, according to Kathleen Bradish, VP for legal advocacy at the American Antitrust Institute.

The latest allegations against Ticketmaster should not lead to a repeat of history, Bradish said.

“DOJ should pursue new enforcement action to obtain effective structural relief,” Bradish said, calling for a breakup of Live Nation under either Section 7 of the Clayton Act or Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

Sen. Mike Lee said the way that history has unfolded since the Live Nation merger raises “very serious doubts” about the usefulness of consent agreements imposed by the federal government.

“While DOJ undoubtedly wants to know whether Ticketmaster is violating the consent decree, Congress should be asking whether the consent decree was the right decision in the first place,” Lee said.

If the current Justice Department concludes that the consent decree has been violated, “unwinding the merger ought to be on the table,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

SeatGeek, a rival to Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, alleged that many venue owners “fear losing Live Nation concerts if they don’t use Ticketmaster” and its services.

Live Nation’s tightly integrated operation puts it in a prime position to exercise undue influence, and the company must be broken up, argued Jack Groetzinger, CEO of SeatGeek.

“Live Nation controls the most popular entertainers in the world, routes most of the large tours, operates the ticketing systems and even owns many of the venues,” he told lawmakers. “This power over the entire live entertainment industry allows Live Nation to maintain its monopolistic influence over the primary ticketing market.”

“As long as Live Nation remains both the dominant concert promoter and ticketer of major venues in the US, the industry will continue to lack competition and struggle,” he said.

In his opening testimony, Live Nation CFO Joe Berchtold suggested that venues enjoy significant leeway to run their operations. He testified that Ticketmaster does not set ticket prices, does not determine the number of tickets put up for sale and that “in most cases, venues set service and ticketing fees,” not Ticketmaster.

In his opening remarks at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, a top Live Nation Entertainment exec apologized for the Taylor Swift concert tickets sale fiasco.

“As we said after the onsale, and I reiterate today: We apologize to the fans. We apologize to Ms. Swift. We need to do better and we will do better,” said Joe Berchtold, the president and CFO of Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation Entertainment.

Berchtold blamed the fiasco on a bot attack and said it forced the company to “slow down and even pause our sales,” which led to a “terrible consumer experience that we deeply regret.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, emphasized the importance of competition to uphold a capitalist system in her opening remarks at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the event ticketing industry’s market practices.

While criticizing the practice of consolidation in the market, she used Taylor Swift’s lyrics, saying it’s a practice that the country knows “all too well.”

“To have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition. You can’t have too much consolidation — something that, unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say, we know ‘all too well.’”

The Senate Judiciary’s leading Democrat and Republican kicked off Tuesday’s hearing by targeting Ticketmaster’s economic dominance.

“These issues are symptomatic, I think, of a larger problem,” said committee chair Sen. Dick Durbin, arguing that live event ticketing has been “dominated by a single entity” that was created from a decade-old merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

Durbin said he believes the legally binding consent agreement allowing Live Nation to complete the deal with conditions has not succeeded in preserving competition.

“That consent decree does not appear to have been effective,” Durbin said. “In the decade-plus since the merger, Live Nation has consolidated its dominant position in the live ticketing market.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the panel’s top Republican, agreed that “consolidation of power in the hands of a few can create problems for the many.”

“Out of this hearing,” he said, “I hope we can make a better experience of the consumer being able to buy tickets to things you want to see without such a debacle” as the Taylor Swift ticketing process.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing where event ticketing industry executives will testify. This comes two months after Ticketmaster’s mishandling of the sale of Taylor Swift concert tickets in November, which sparked a conversation about possible monopoly in the live entertainment market.

Here are the witnesses who will testify:

Joe Berchtold, the president and CFO of Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation Entertainment

Jack Groetzinger, CEO of ticketing platform SeatGeek

Jerry Mickelson, CEO of Jam Productions, one of the largest producers of live entertainment

Clyde Lawrence, singer-songwriter who has composed music for motion pictures, including the Disney+ holiday comedy movie “Noelle.”

Taylor Swift spoke out about how the Ticketmaster situation was “excruciating” for her to watch.

“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,” the singer wrote in an Instagram post last November, shortly after the fiasco unfolded. “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”

Swift added that she would try to “figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward.”

Sales for the singer’s new Eras Tour began in November, but overwhelming demand snarled the ticketing site, infuriating countless fans who couldn’t buy tickets. Customers complained on social media about Ticketmaster not loading, saying the platform didn’t allow them to access tickets, even if they had a pre-sale code for verified fans.

Soon after, Ticketmaster announced that the sale to the general public was canceled due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.”

“To those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to get together and sing these songs,” Swift said.

Taylor Swift’s Eras tour kicks off March 17 and will have 52 concerts in multiple stadiums across the United States over five months. Overwhelming demand snarled the ticketing site in November, infuriating countless fans.

Customers complained on social media about Ticketmaster not loading, saying the platform didn’t allow them to access tickets, even if they had a pre-sale code for verified fans. Ticketmaster ultimately canceled ticket sales to the general public.

Ticketmaster apologized to Swift and her fans who were unable to secure tickets and blamed the debacle on its “Verified Fans” system, a mechanism aimed at eliminating bots that gives presale codes to individuals.

The system couldn’t keep up with the intense demand, Ticketmaster said.

Roughly 3.5 million people signed up for the program to buy Swift tickets, its “largest registration in history.” That unprecedented demand, combined with a “staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes” drove “unprecedented traffic” to its site, Ticketmaster said, and, essentially, broke it.

But the House Energy and Commerce Committee said the company’s explanation wasn’t sufficient.

“This statement raises questions over your bot management solution and its ability to adequately protect consumers,” the committee wrote in a letter to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino.

The committee pointed out that the BOTS Act of 2016 allows the Federal Trade Commission to fine Ticketmaster with “steep” penalties if it “knowingly sold tickets that were improperly purchased” by bots.

The committee also said it wants information about the fees Ticketmaster charges customers. It also asked to learn more about dynamic pricing. ticket availability limits, restrictions on transferabiity and the company’s efforts to thwart bots and scammers.

Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the wake of the Taylor Swift tour ticketing chaos, Sen. Amy Klobuchar criticized Ticketmaster in an open letter to its CEO, saying she has “serious concerns” about the company’s operations.

Complaints from Swift fans unable to buy tickets for her upcoming tour, in addition to criticism about high fees, suggests that the company “continues to abuse its market positions,” the Democrat from Minnesota wrote in the letter to CEO Michael Rapino in November, shortly after the fiasco unfolded.

“Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services. That can result in the types of dramatic service failures we saw this week, where consumers are the ones that pay the price,” she wrote as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the country’s largest concert promoter, merged about a decade ago. Klobuchar noted that the company at the time pledged to “develop an easy-access, one-stop platform” for ticket delivery. The senator told Rapino that it “appears that your confidence was misplaced.”

“When Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, it was subject to an antitrust consent decree that prohibited it from abusing its market position,” Klobuchar wrote. “Nonetheless, there have been numerous complaints about your company’s compliance with that decree.”

The letter included a list of questions for Rapino to answer by the following week. Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN Business.

In response to the snafu, the company had said “there has been historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up” to buy tickets for Swift’s tour and thanked fans for their “patience.”

A top Ticketmaster executive plans to blame “industrial scalpers” for recent online ticketing snafus and will call for legislation to rein in those bad actors, according to a copy of his prepared congressional testimony.

Joe Berchtold, the chief financial officer of Ticketmaster parent Live Nation, will tell lawmakers Tuesday that a surge of automated bots targeting the Taylor Swift ticket sale forced the company to “slow down” its operations.

“We knew bots would attack that onsale, and planned accordingly,” according to Berchtold’s prepared remarks. “We were then hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we had ever experienced, and for the first time in 400 Verified Fan onsales they came after our Verified Fan access code servers. While the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets, the attack required us to slow down and even pause our sales. This is what led to a terrible consumer experience that we deeply regret.”

Berchtold acknowledged that Ticketmaster could have mitigated the disaster by spacing out the release of tickets over a longer period of time, and by “doing a better job setting fan expectations.”

“Let me be clear that Ticketmaster accepts its responsibility to be the first line of defense against bots in this ever-escalating arms race,” he added, before pleading with lawmakers for “real reforms” to limit the impact of scalpers. That could include, he said, giving Ticketmaster and other private actors the legal right to sue scalpers for violations of the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, which bans the circumvention of ticketing providers’ integrity programs.

Complaints about the Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation’s monopoly power go back long, long before the Taylor Swift tour ticket problems last year.

In 1994, when Taylor Swift was only four years old and ticket purchase queues were in person or on the phone, not online, the rock group Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the Justice Department’s antitrust division asserting that Ticketmaster has a “virtually absolute monopoly on the distribution of tickets to concerts.” It tried to book its tour only at venues that didn’t use Ticketmaster.

The Justice Department and many state attorneys general have made similar complaints over the years.

Despite those concerns, Ticketmaster continued to grow more dominant. Pearl Jam’s complaint was quietly dismissed. The Justice Department and states allowed the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger to go through despite a 2010 court filing in the case raising objections to the merger. In the filing, the Justice Department said Ticketmaster’s share among major concert venues exceeded 80%.

CNN Business’ Chris Isidore contributed to this report.

Ticketmaster apologized to Taylor Swift and her fans in November after a ticketing debacle this week that made it difficult for consumers to buy tickets to the pop star’s new tour.

“We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets,” the ticketing site said in the blog post.

The company added that it strives to make ticket buying “as easy as possible,” but that “hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets” to Swift’s tour, which kicks off March 17 and will have 52 concerts in multiple stadiums across the US over five months.

The company said that it is working to “shore up our tech for the new bar that has been set by demand” for her tour. “Once we get through that, if there are any next steps, updates will be shared accordingly,” it wrote.

Senate lawmakers will grill top executives from the event ticketing industry on Tuesday after Ticketmaster’s inability to process orders for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour left millions of fans unable to buy tickets or without their ticket even after purchase, and reignited public scrutiny on the industry.

Joe Berchtold, the president and CFO of Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation Entertainment, will testify along with Jack Groetzinger, CEO of ticketing platform SeatGeek. Others testifying include: Jerry Mickelson, CEO of Jam Productions, one of the largest producers of live entertainment, and singer-songwriter Clyde Lawrence, who has composed music for motion pictures, including the Disney+ holiday comedy movie “Noelle.”

“The issues within America’s ticketing industry were made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift’s new tour, but these problems are not new,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who sits on the committee, said in a statement about the hearing. “We will examine how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industries harms customers and artists alike. Without competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.”