The end is near! Live Nation and Ticketmaster may merge!

By Alex Young on February 4th, 2009 in News

11 Comments »
The end is near! Live Nation and Ticketmaster may merge!

In what would be the closet modern day example of an apocalypse for concerts goers, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are reportedly close to a merger. According to The Wall Street Journal, the two industry heavy-weights are nearing a deal that would combine the world’s biggest concert promoter (Live Nation) with the world’s dominant ticketing and artist-management (Ticketmaster), creating a music conglomerate of epic proportions, known as Live Nation Ticketmaster.

The boards of both companies have yet to approve any merger, these people said, and sticking points remain. One potential hitch: Because the merger would concentrate so much power in the music industry under one company it would require review by antitrust authorities. Nonetheless, the deal, which would not entail an exchange of cash, could be announced as early as next week.

As the report goes on to point out, the creation of Live Nation Ticketmaster would bring relationships with over 200 artists, including Madonna, Jay-Z, The Eagles, and Christina Aguilera under one giant roof. One would also have to think the merger will also affect the already astronomical service fees that greet us upon check out at the respective ticketing outlets. After all, where’d the competition be coming from?

Needless to say, this probably wasn’t the news you wanted to be waking up to.

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comments (11)

  • Will(with many more Ls) – Your points are valid. However, I think most people feel like that the extra fees are absurd for a few reasons. First, there are multiple fees tacked on when you buy tickets. Its not like one large tax. Why should the consumer have to pay for the convenience charge? Why is it so high? That’s not what really gets me though.

    I LOVE when you have the option of paying the extra printing fee to have Ticketmaster mail the tickets to you for free OR you pay extra money to print it at home yourself. What?! Why would TM charge extra for the consumers to print the tickets at home???

    Next, most companies take costs into account when they set prices. That way everyone can make educated purchases. Ticketmaster sets the prices at high levels and then adds on extra fees. As a result, a consumer will add four tickets into his/her cart, see the total with tax and think, “wow, that is a ridiculous amount of money to see that band play for one night.” Then, after clicking through, the price increases even more. That’s the problem.

    Matt Friedman February 9, 2009 at 7:04 pm

  • i work for ticketmaster, and i jsut would like to point out that people seem to get the impression that all those ancillary/convinience/token fees go directly into the pockets of ticketmaster. they dont. building facility, city tax (not all cities do this, but ours does, at 10% of the ticketprice), your friendly mastercard/visa/amx AND ticketmaster all get cuts out of that. some of you may realize this – others wont.
    as a music fan, i whole-heartedly agree that ticket prices in general are extraordinary, and this merger would sadly eliminate a large slice of ticketmasters competition. but to bash ticketmaster soley for the added-on-fees is unfair. it wouldnt be noticed and bitched about half as much if it was just included in the ticket price.
    now let the hate mail reign in…

    willlllllllllll February 5, 2009 at 3:03 am

  • well just imagine how i felt when walking in this morning to get my cup o joe and finding out that the company i work for is merging. We tried really hard to seprate ourselves from the other company and creating our own industry niche, just so that our greddy CEO’s can see stock prices go up and not worry about the ramifications of this trickeling down to its employees. This indeed sucks.

    pissed off employee February 4, 2009 at 2:04 pm

  • The problems with a merger like this are not always so readily apparent, but still result from the antitrust issues. By forming such a powerful entity, the price of entry for a competitor increases tenfold. Any new company wishing to enter the marketplace will struggle to find larger artists to sell tickets through its services. In the end, you may have one or two smaller “mom and pop” shops set up that deal almost exclusively with independent artists. Even then, Live Nation and Ticketmaster will do whatever is in their power to buy these smaller companies – a la TicketWeb and all the other smaller sites that have been gobbled up over the years. Thus, in reality, we’ll be left with this giant corporation and probably a few regional/local companies.

    Then again, I didn’t read the full article and this merger might only bring together parts of the companies. Live Nation has been signing artists (e.g., Jay-Z) to 360 deals, acting like a label/management company and earning royalties off of the artists’ tours. If only aspects of the companies are coming together, this might not be as bad as it sounds.

    Matt Friedman February 4, 2009 at 12:34 pm

  • fuck.

    James February 4, 2009 at 11:32 am

  • A lot of smaller artists and venues avoid these behemoths. Didn’t Pearl Jam avoid them for many years (or at least managed to keep ticket prices down), which more or less meant they stayed at home for a number of those years. Hard to do business with a monopoly out there. I’d love for another company to step in and do it right, but I’m pretty sure LN&TM’s stranglehold would make it very difficult, at least to cut us deals on the artists and venues we’re currently getting screwed on.

    mister melis February 4, 2009 at 11:19 am

  • Where is Obama now? Step in and bust up this monopoly. Use the monopoly stick to smack it.

    Friends, welcome to the music-going world as we’ll know it. $50 tickets with $150 convenience charges. We can only hope McDonald’s doesn’t merge with them as well.

    2 tickets lower balcony (check)
    absurd fee for taking 2 tickets and putting them in an envelope for you (check)
    fries with that? (check)
    absurd fee for taking fries and putting them in an envelope for you (check)

    Final Result: Mediocre show, empty bank account, and food poisoning…

    mister melis February 4, 2009 at 11:11 am

  • My Coachella ticket had $63 in fees tacked onto it from Ticketmaster. Live Nation’s new ticketing system, while promised to have lower or no service fees (obviously they would have been worked into the price already,) has been tacking on some huge fees as well. Live Nation’s site was also crashing like crazy for all of the Phish onsales. I had problems with Ticketmaster and Springsteen where they offered me 4 good tickets and I chose to buy them only to receive a “We are sorry, but your request cannot be processed.” Of course, I tried again only to see that everything was sold out.

    Pat February 4, 2009 at 10:32 am

  • shit likes to stick together!

    ScottieM February 4, 2009 at 9:32 am

  • I’ve always been extremely frustrated that there hasn’t been another company to step up and challenge Ticketmaster. I haven’t bought my Coachella tickets yet, mainly because the fact that I have to pay $30 in “convenience fees” sours my mood for about a day and I’m not ready yet to accept that. Artists (and especially sports teams) need to get their collective sh*t together and figure how to distribute these tickets themselves…

    Heimster February 4, 2009 at 9:01 am

  • this sucks

    concertgoer February 4, 2009 at 8:24 am

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