Live Nation and Ticketmaster Merge

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After a year of quiet deliberations behind closed doors while everyone from angry congressmen to consumer advocates to Bruce Springsteen shouted in opposition outside, the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday gave its blessing to the merger of two of the most controversial companies in the music industry: giant national concert promoters Live Nation and monopolistic ticket brokers Ticketmaster.
The ruling--which can be read here--cleared the way for the creation of a new company called Live Nation Entertainment that will own more than 140 concert venues worldwide and sell 140 million tickets to 22,000 concerts annually. It will dominate every aspect of the live music industry, setting prices while promoting shows from small clubs to giant arenas, selling the tickets, concessions and merchandise for those gigs and managing the performers who play them.
...
The major stumbling block to the scenario of three competing ticket brokers is that Ticketmaster has locked almost all of the major concert venues in America into exclusivity agreements of five to ten years, and venues will not be able to entertain competing offers until those expire. ...
The government is trusting an ever-expanding big business to police itself and act in consumers' interests.
For followers of politics as practiced in Chicago, it is hard not to suspect some successful influence peddling. In addition to employing the most high-powered Democratic lobbyists in Washington, Live Nation's board members include Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel, brother of President Obama's chief of staff and former North Side congressman Rahm Emanuel, while Ticketmaster's board of directors included the President's Harvard classmate and transition team leader Julius Genachowski, until he resigned to become chairman of the FCC.
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[SETH HURWITZ INDIE CONCERT PROMOTER]
"I had been assured by the DOJ that the plan they came up with is actually better for everyone than blocking the merger. And then I woke up Tuesday morning to find out that my tickets are now, in fact, being sold by Live Nation, my competitor. They rushed that merger through Monday night like an NFL team snaps the next play before anyone has a chance to throw that red flag...Creating competition is worthless if there is no means to use it."
Click to expand...

blogs.suntimes.com/derogatis/2010/01/looking_closer_at_the_ticketma.html

Thought this was a great read. Looks like concerts ain't going to be getting any cheaper...
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']small clubs > large venues anyways.[/QUOTE]

sadly many small clubs go through live nation or ticketmaster for their events.

i know ive given ticketmaster about $50 in fees for the various sharks game ive gone to this season.
 
Ridiculous.

But I'll keep ponying up since I love going to concerts, and most of my favorite bands and popular (Pearl Jam, DMB etc.) and only play pavilions and arenas. At least with PJ I get my tickets through their fan club.
 
[quote name='UncleBob']I just don't see the point in caring...[/QUOTE]

Back in the day I can remember promoters putting on some pretty interesting concerts for competitive prices. But every year it seems the lineups become more stale, the acts get more vanilla and the prices get more outrageous. When all of the big venues are signed up with one company, they can charge any price they want and the costs get pushed into the product and the price.

Like others in this thread, these days I go exclusively to small venues, that (judging by the 5 to 10 dollar cover) have remained free of ticketmaster's yoke. That's great, but it's also kinda sad that big concerts and their price tag suck so hard, and that indie promoters with interesting ideas get forced out of the game by the big corporate player.
 
It's monopolistic practices and outrageous fees on ticketmaster's end - and the problem is exacerbated when they are allowed to buy up their competition.

I decided against going to see big-time WWE wrestling on Monday night. For a number of reasons - I was busy, it was a bit of a drive, and I'm not too thrilled with the product they have on TV, so why see it live? Another factor was cost - I didn't even know they were coming to town until I saw an NHL game and the were hyping WWE at the arena. $15 tickets!

$15? That's threefold cheaper than any WWE show I've ever been to, and the last one was 2005ish. I'm on it.

But with the TM surcharged, it was just under $25. My price of admission jumped up nearly 67% because of the middleman. I had $15, I was willing to pay $15. In a free market, nobody would charge $10 in fees on a $15 ticket because they'd be undercut in a heartbeat. So I don't have much interest in supporting them in the absence of that free market.

More folks need to support Brown Paper Tickets.
 
You've used a bit of a poor example there - as you said, $15 is pretty cheap. Even $25 is still cheap in comparison to the $45 ticket you bought in 2005-ish.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Haha. Yeah, WWE was really wanting to give up its revenue to another company.[/QUOTE]

Ticketmaster has connections in all aspects of event planning and promotions. It is so unreasonable to assume that they can offer services cheaper (and still make a profit) than the WWE can do these things themselves?
 
most venues around here either sell their own tickets (the small music venues) or use brown paper tickets (the parties/non-music events)... the only places i know of that use ticketmaster are the huge 1,000+ capacity venues that never do anything cool anyway
 
[quote name='mykevermin']It's monopolistic practices and outrageous fees on ticketmaster's end - and the problem is exacerbated when they are allowed to buy up their competition.
[/QUOTE]

True. But giving it more thought, I've bought tickets from Live Nation the past couple years as well as Ticketmaster.

The Prices and Fees were pretty much identical--fucking ridiculous at both. So it's not like this merger will have a negative impact really, as they weren't competing with each other in driving fees down anyway.

The only thing I liked better about Live Nation is when buying tickets a while after the on sale date, you could use an interactive seating chart and see what seats where open and pick the specific seats you wanted.

That was nice as using best available tends to put you a row or two closer but way off to the side, rather than a few rows back but in the center etc. I don't think Ticketmaster has added that feature (haven't bought tickets after the onsale date from them for a while though), and I'd hate to see that disappear in the merger.
 
They were probably only "competing" in the sense that Live Nation controlled tickets at some venues and Ticketmaster at others. They were never competing for the same venues so the prices didn't need to change.
 
[quote name='SpazX']They were probably only "competing" in the sense that Live Nation controlled tickets at some venues and Ticketmaster at others. They were never competing for the same venues so the prices didn't need to change.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. But that's competing in the sense of which bands they could attract to certain venues.

So Live Nation could have charged lower fees and attracted some big bands who want to keep their ticket prices down as much as possible for fans to play their venues rather than ticket master.

But I think the problem is that within metro areas all the venues tend to either be all ticket master or all Live Nation--at least for concert pavillions. Probably have both options if you factored in sports arenas that have concerts.

But in any case Live Nation didn't choose to go that route, and choose to try to rake in money in fees at the same rates as Ticketmaster in their venues.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']Exactly. But that's competing in the sense of which bands they could attract to certain venues.

So Live Nation could have charged lower fees and attracted some big bands who want to keep their ticket prices down as much as possible for fans to play their venues rather than ticket master.

But I think the problem is that within metro areas all the venues tend to either be all ticket master or all Live Nation--at least for concert pavillions. Probably have both options if you factored in sports arenas that have concerts.

But in any case Live Nation didn't choose to go that route, and choose to try to rake in money in fees at the same rates as Ticketmaster in their venues.[/QUOTE]

From what I read about Live Nation (not much), they controlled various venues, but also they contracted artists. So any particular person contracted with live nation could probably only perform at a venue either owned by live nation or otherwise contracted with them. They could possibly perform at a ticketmaster location if live nation worked it out with them, but that wouldn't help ticket prices either unless live nation really wanted the prices cheaper.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']True. But giving it more thought, I've bought tickets from Live Nation the past couple years as well as Ticketmaster.

The Prices and Fees were pretty much identical--fucking ridiculous at both. So it's not like this merger will have a negative impact really, as they weren't competing with each other in driving fees down anyway.[/QUOTE]

It will definately have a negative impact for indie promoters and the types of acts you can see on a big stage. For evidence look no farther then the original article.

COMMENTS FROM SETH HURWITZ, CHAIRMAN OF I.MP., OWNERS OF WASHINGTON, D.C.'s 9:30 CLUB, PROMOTER AT THE MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILION AND VIRGIN MOBILE FEST:
"I had been assured by the DOJ that the plan they came up with is actually better for everyone than blocking the merger.
"And then I woke up Tuesday morning to find out that my tickets are now, in fact, being sold by Live Nation, my competitor. They rushed that merger through Monday night like an NFL team snaps the next play before anyone has a chance to throw that red flag.
Click to expand...

I wish I knew the details, but timing indicates it's probable that something about the merger effected this switcheroo. Maybe it's just that Live Nation was even waiting for the merger OK before gobbling up the competition through newly minted contracts...
 
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