Spotlight Series: Spencer Weber Waller on Broadway’s Monopolies and the Live Nation/Ticketmaster Fight

Why does it feel like a few companies decide which shows we see and how much we pay to get in? On this Spotlight Series episode of “Half Hour,” we sit down with antitrust scholar Spencer Weber Waller, author of Power and Greed: Monopolies, Mergers, and Cartels on the American Stage, who spent years digging through the Shubert Archive, tucked in the attic of the Lyceum Theatre, to find out. Spencer shares what surprised him in those files, including records from the Justice Department’s monopoly case against the Shuberts, and explains antitrust law in plain English. We trace how the Theatrical Syndicate controlled bookings, how the Shubert brothers fought back, why vaudeville faded, and what this history means for today’s Live Nation/Ticketmaster case: break it up, or make it change its ways?

Get Spencer’s book, Power and Greed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1350578096

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