As expected, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have confirmed their plan to merge, creating a new full service concert monster called Live Nation Entertainment.
This is clearly a marriage made in hell and something that needs to fail at the first antitrust hurdle.
A merger between the biggest U.S. ticketing company and the world's leading concert promoter would not be in the interest of bands or music fans. The new entity will have a lock on venues and tickets sales.
Ticketmaster have already shown that they can't be trusted with the kind of monopoly this would create they've been caught artificially raising prices by using a "sister" site to scalp their own tickets.
Yahoo News reports:
This is clearly a marriage made in hell and something that needs to fail at the first antitrust hurdle.
A merger between the biggest U.S. ticketing company and the world's leading concert promoter would not be in the interest of bands or music fans. The new entity will have a lock on venues and tickets sales.
Ticketmaster have already shown that they can't be trusted with the kind of monopoly this would create they've been caught artificially raising prices by using a "sister" site to scalp their own tickets.
Yahoo News reports:
A New Jersey congressman is demanding an investigation after Bruce Springsteen fans were unable to buy tickets from Ticketmaster's Web site which then promptly offered them more expensive tickets from a subsidiary.
Utterly disgraceful behavior. Ticketmaster alone has a monopoly allowing them to vertically merge should be out of the question. If a merger happens, profit margins will be increased at the expense of artist fees and the humble music fan.
Grrrrr!!!!
bean:
I'm gradually beginning to think that a total ban on mergers of all sorts would be a good idea. The bigger a company is, the more dangerous it is, in terms of its power and influence, its ability to manipulate the marketplace, and the danger it poses to workers, consumers and the economy at large.