Category: Live Music blog- It looks like a merger will happen this week between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. This will combine the biggest concert promoter in the world with the top ticketing and artist-management company in the industry. This will meld the two into a very powerful music industry force. Live Nation has been trying to further penetrate into other areas of the music business, such as artist management. By bringing these two company’s together it is estimated that the total value of both will be over $700 million. The name of the new entity would reportedly be, “Live Nation Ticketmaster“. Both company’s generate over 6 billion dollars a year in revenue combined.
This merger will mostly be met with major anti-trust issues from all levels of the music industry.
Bruce Springsteen has already come out condemning the deal on his website. Springsteen said, “The one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing. If you, like us, oppose that idea, you should make it known to your representatives.”
Irving Azoff, the chief executive of Ticketmaster who managed the bands Guns and Roses and the Eagles, will become executive chairman of the combined company, to be called Live Nation Entertainment. He will also be the chief executive of Front Line Management, the largest artist management firm, which he had sold to Ticketmaster and which will become a unit of the combined company.
The music industry is changing daily and it will be interesting to see how this deal affects the industry as a whole and what kind of push back they get.
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