It’s Official: Live Nation And Ticketmaster To Become One
It was announced today that the Department of Justice will finally approve the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger after a year of investigation. The new company will be called Live Nation Entertainment and has agreed to “strike a ticketing licensing agreement with AEG.” Despite concertgoers’ worries about outrageous ticket costs, entertainment lawyer Allen Grubman claims, “Ticket prices are about supply and demand. You’re not going to be able to charge unrealistic prices for tickets just because of one new element. If the public is not interested in buying because of high prices, they’re not going to go to concerts.” Only time will tell if this merge turns out well for those of us buying the tickets — or for Live Nation and Ticketmaster themselves, who re-enter a once-tightly-controlled ticketing marketplace that is in the process of fragmenting due to smaller upstarts like Ticketleap, Ticketfly and Brown Paper Tickets, who cater to smaller, independently produced events and are quickly being adopted by promoters..
January 25th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Lawyer Grubman is technically right – ticket PRICES are about supply and demand. But those ever-rising ticket surcharges have nothing to do with supply and demand and everything to do with holding a monopoly on ticket delivery.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:19 am
live nation’s surcharges are ridiculous. already sometimes as much as 50% of the ticket price.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:20 am
and their oh-so-convenient box office is in bala cynwyd, only open 10-3 on weekdays. disgusting.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:24 am
If you guys did your homework you’d know that live nation makes peanuts on shows–blame the artists for they’re obscenely high guarantees.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:24 am
Crap. Their*
January 26th, 2010 at 10:46 am
@the jerk:
I’m gonna make what is probably a mistake and pretend you aren’t just trolling, but… Live Nation’s fees, which are what most people have issues with, are pure profit.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
The Jerk has a point – artists are getting paid more and more by Live Nation and Ticketmaster for exclusive contracts (and to offset lost revenue from file sharing). R5′s Sean Agnew was complaining about that aspect in some Philebs article a few months back. I’ve also read that TicketMaster’s profits from initial ticket sales are minimal – they make most of their profits from the fees, merch sales, secondary ticket sales (they’ve worked to limit scalped ticket sales to “authorized dealers”, ie them)
January 26th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Both companies are publicly held. You can see EXACTLY ho much money they do or do not make. The suggest that Live Nation doesn’t make money on their shows is completely insane!
However they do make a great deal of $$ with the fees (pure profit) and weird licensing agreements like exclusively selling Pappa Johns pizza at their events.