Culture

Ticketmaster and Live Nation Move Closer To A Merger

by Robert Sutherland | February 4, 2009 at 11:50 am

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News out of Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal has live entertainment giants Ticketmaster and Live Nation closer to a merger than before. Both entertainment companies have grown within the live entertainment industry over the past two years and have worked together closely during that time. Reports now have the two combining their efforts.

The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said the boards of the two companies had not yet approved the deal, which would create a company called Live Nation Ticketmaster.

Live Nation is the world's largest concert promotion and venue manager. They own and operate thousands of concert and festival venues all over the world and promote, almost exclusively, events they are working on at those venues. Live Nation has recently stretched out into the artist management field. Signing big name artists like Jay-Z and Nickelback to the new Live Nation Artists firm. This means that they will now manage the artists, promote and plan the tours, own the venues they tour in and release their albums.

Ticketmaster is the largest ticket printing company in the world. Any promoter can go through Ticketmaster to print and sell tickets through the companies website and pay a per ticket fee. Live Nation has been a major user of this service and had been in talks to merge the two giants.

Live Nation spokesman John Vlautin said the company does not comment on "rumors and speculation."

Rumors and reports are swirling and the waters unclear as to what a merger might mean for the industry. It is moving more and more towards a monopoly and those never work out well for the young and emerging.

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Karenke4

at 17:04 on February 4th, 2009

With a merger I am sure they will be happy to charge even more under the heading of 'handling' fees! I hate them both... charging an additional $10-20 a ticket to already overpriced concerts! Who can afford shows anymore?

Brittany Somerset

at 21:30 on February 11th, 2009

Live Nation treats the press like sh*t. By the time they escort photographers to the pit, the first 3 songs are over, and we get kicked out of the stadium. If we buy a ticket so we can stay and watch the show, the Live Nation rep confiscates our cameras, while 30,000 fans can use their cameras. It is ridiculous. When I shot Lil Wayne at the Verizon center, they put us all the way back by the sound board, where we were too far away to get any shots and then the sound guy didn't want us there and so we were subsequently kicked out. You'd think Live Nation would have figured all that out in advance and planned a better place to put us.