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Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged today creating one behemoth of a company called Live Nation Entertainment. The merger, expected to save the companies $40 million and create annual sales worth up to $6 billion, is now subject to an anti-trust review because they would dominate 80% of the market. The new company will fill various rolls including promotion, ticketing and artist management. Ticketmaster has always been under general scrutiny for service charges and the such and most recently some legal complaints. The question now is whether with Live Nation's presence, will the company treat customers with the respect they've deserve? Comment with your predictions below...
The Death of Ticketmaster (in Name at least)
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how do you contact system administer?chuck@socalsk8andsurf.com
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Yay! now I can be charged $45 for a $10 ticket .. F U Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
As long as the Troubadour continue to be free of Ticketmaster fees in their fax order. I don't mind.
I can compare the price when I buy Laker playoff tickets in the near future.
There's no way in hell those fees will go down. And I've never known of a single massive corporate merger-bordering-on-monopoly than brought about lower prices for consumers.
actually, they've already announced that there surcharges will go DOWN.
How?
The plan is to add the fees to the ticket price. So from now on, face value will be higher but the associated fees will be lower.
The Ticketmaster CEO Azoff had announced this as being part of the 1-2 year plan when Ticketmaster was spun off by Citysearch. And the Live Nation CEO Rapino confirmed that was a plan they wanted to stick with after the merger.
face value high / associated fees lower = just hiding the fees. it's sort of a catch 22 situation... people want to know what they're paying for so TM broke it out (face value, convenience charge, facility fee), and then of course people get angry because the end total is so much more than the face value. If they hide the fees than the ticket price goes up and people blame the artist/promoter for being greedy bastards.
I'm not sure what I would prefer as a consumer... I know when I've got a good seat in my shopping cart on TM and I get a total that is $15-20 more than the face value I'll still buy it. I'm not sure if I would do that if a ticket is just straight up $100. Would probably depend on the artist... the venue... what ticket I pull up if I even look.
i'm just interested to see what this is going to do to other promoters that have do business with ticketmaster- aeg/goldenvoice, nederlander, etc.
Wow, they are going to save $40 Million... Mainly because they are laying off half the people that are currently working for each one of them and now they only need for each field? And then the mega company goes bankrupt one day and needs a bail out and there is no other company that sells tickets?
I'm a big fan of Long Beach based Tix.com.
BOOOOOOOOO!!!!