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Power and Greed

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What to expect

Since the second half of the 19th century, live entertainment in the United States has been governed by monopolies and powerful business cartels. Through power and greed they 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 and newly available archival material, 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 antitrust 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.

Critics Review

Have you ever wanted to know how the business of Broadway came to be? Read this book. Spencer Waller has concisely and provocatively charted the windy road map of the American commercial theatre from its humble immigrant beginnings to today. With a cast of real-life characters as brilliant, clumsy, inspired, flawed and passionate as anything you might see on a stage, Waller navigates the riveting tale of powerful business brokers’ inevitable descent from best intentions to conspiracy and, finally, bold-faced collusion. Yes, this is a tale of our time.
Kevin McCollum, Tony Award-winning producer of In the Heights, Avenue Q, and Rent
Americans have a funny relationship with competition: on the one hand, they cheer for the underdog, they admire the entrepreneur, and they prize open opportunity for all; on the other hand, that very freedom has led, repeatedly, to the rise of powerful cartels and monopolies. Professor Waller’s book tells the tale of the titanic figures whose clashes led to 21st-century American theater—ambitious people who wanted to dominate the business, but whose efforts were constantly thwarted by newcomers and, when things got rough, by the United States government itself. It was through the antitrust laws that the early rough-and-tumble was ultimately tamed. As theater expanded from New York’s Broadway to the rest of the country, and even jumped across the “Pond” to influence London, powerful actors such as Abe Erlanger, the Frohman brothers, the Shubert brothers, and Marcus Loew (to name just a few) each sought in their turn to dominate the market. Professor Waller, a noted antitrust expert himself, explains how their actions suppressed competition and innovation, even while theater spread throughout the country. This is a great book for anyone who has ever tried to buy a concert ticket through Live Nation, or who enjoys the magic of live theater, or who wants to understand why the antitrust laws, and free competition, matter.
Diane Wood, Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School
In show business (it’s been said) you can’t make a living, but you can make a killing. In Power and Greed, Spencer Waller draws on his dual background as an antitrust expert and former federal prosecutor to deliver a fascinating, eye-opening, occasionally startling account of the many ways that cartels and corporations have tried to grab that loot for themselves, and the tools that artists and audiences have wielded to fight back. With its high stakes, larger-than-life characters, and episodes of gleeful criminality, this book is as dramatic as the plays that it describes. It’s an essential read for understanding the big business of American entertainment—both how we got here and where we might go next.
Jeremy McCarter, co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Hamilton: The Revolution
Author Spencer Weber Waller
Duration 9 hours
Release Date
ISBN 9781350636613
Format Audiobook
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre History of Performing Arts, Performing arts, Theatre management
Availability AU, GB, IE, US

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