Yes, I think they have leveraged their power to keep the situation in their favor and not let a competitor come up. I don't really see a reason we couldn't have 4-5 ticketmaster type companies that still do some of the BS stuff we all hate. The whole thing where Ticketmaster will refuse other artists if your venue doesn't use them is very monopolistic.
Yeah every large venue, even if they were 100% independent, by default has a monopoly within some distance. And their management can access granular population density, income, etc…, data too, so they would all just price roughly the same modulo venue quality and expected demographic within X travel time. Regardless of where the artist chose to perform.
