I did, yes. The second link has the relevant quote from the CFO - “We’re probably – you know, maybe we cried too much last year when we were hitting numbers that were 3.5% of sales”.

Though looking at the context, it looks like he regrets the actions (specifically increased security hired) that came from that. There doesn’t seem to be anything about the link to store closures.

The actual link came from an article Shepard Pie below you provided here (Is Shoplifting Really Surging?). Apparently nationwide, shoplifting is down - except in certain cities

But the increase in shoplifting appears to be limited to a few cities, rather than being truly national. […] There are some exceptions, particularly New York City, where shoplifting has spiked.

Out of the 24 cities, 17 reported decreases in shoplifting.

I’m guessing the 7 remaining cities are where the stores were closed.

This is just like Walgreens and RiteAid claiming they have to close stores due to theft, only to later admit that was a complete fabrication.

Thought this was interesting, so I tried looking for more information. Didn’t find anything other than people speculating. If you have a link or search terms I could use to find of an article of these or similar companies saying the closings were actually because of something else, I’d appreciate it.

Agreed

I’m not ignoring it but as you said, their role is to play the lightning rod. Why on earth are people falling for the lightning rod even after knowing about it and not complaining about the venue. Every single comment here is blaming the fall-guy exactly as designed. Why should they ever change their strategy - it’s working exactly as they want.

Thanks for proving my point. Taking two seconds to think about the trigger word list I put out would lead to the conclusion that no-one would support all of them.

But yea, pop off trying to get a gotcha in. More power to you.

People like this and the ones who responded to you aren’t thinking. They see the words Ticketmaster or Corporation and immediately lose any sense of higher-level reasoning - they just start metaphorically foaming at the mouth. Other trigger words: libs/trump/edison/GMO/coal/big tech/ you get the picture

On topic to the OP -

• it’s not Ticketmaster setting these rules, it’s the venue
• they probably had the seating rule listed somewhere along the process and you just skipped over it
• you can just… not fucking go

Maybe they’re trying the AoT thing where it’s The Final Season pt1, pt2, pt3.1, pt3.2. Though yea, it’s got to be an anime original ending. No way they can cram the rest in one season.

Yea, that’s what they talked about in the article

I’ve seen similar complaints with when reading about western animation too - but the context for that was in an animation guide (The Animator’s Survival Kit). I wonder if there’ll be any attempt to consolidate/document anime animation tricks before the old farts there croak