Full Description
Since the second half of the 19th century, live entertainment in the United States has been governed by monopolies and powerful business cartels who together through power and greed controlled who could produce, book, and present live performance and legitimate theatre, affecting audiences in New York City and across North America.
Far from being a historical problem, it took the botched rollout of the 2023 Taylor Swift Eras tour via Live Nation/Ticketmaster for people and Congress to question this established history, and more importantly, ask what could be done to change it via stronger enforcement of the antitrust laws to help prevent high prices and poor service suffered by concert-goers who buy their tickets online.
But how did we get to this point? This is the story of the real battle for Broadway, where the men who controlled the business determined not only who produced for the theatrical and vaudeville stage but also what they produced, who would perform, where the show would play, how much the audience would pay, and how those profits would be divided. Discover how it took the law nearly sixty years to catch up to the illegal anticompetitive strategies of the Barons of the Gilded Age and their successors and why this story matters today.
Including 18 images, many of which are exclusives from the Shubert Archives, Power and Greed unpacks the shady world of the Syndicate, the Shuberts, the Vaudeville Combine, and their modern-day successors. Combining archival research, lively discussion and historical narrative this is a perfect read for theatre and entertainment fans, history enthusiasts and students of anti-trust law that shows us how market competition and competition law can shape, but never eliminate, the worst impulses of those in power and those who seek power over what we see in live entertainment.
Contents
1. Setting the Stage
2. Live Entertainment Becomes a National Business
3.The Entertainment Barons of the Gilded Age
4.The Rise of the Syndicate
5.Trustbusting and its Loopholes
6.The Price of Independence
7.The Challenge of the Shuberts
8.Competition, Collusion, and Dirty Tricks
9.The Vaudeville War and Dreams of Global Domination
10.Labor and Monopoly
11.Empire
12.Survival
13.The Quiet Life
14.Justice
15.The End of the Road
16.The New Bottlenecks of Broadway
17.Live Nation, Pearl Jam, and Taylor Swift
18.Epilogue
19.Bibliography and Acknowledgements
Appendix A: The Syndicate Agreement
Appendix B: United States v. Shubert, Supreme Court opinion (1955)
