One-Man Company Now Controls US “Live Events” AND Ticketing
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Irving Azoff is arguably the most powerful man in the history of American pop music.
On January 25, the Justice Department blessed a merger between Ticketmaster, the ticketing giant led by Mr. Azoff since 2008, and Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promotion company.
Irving Azoff is arguably the most powerful man in the history of American pop music.
On January 25, the Justice Department blessed a merger between Ticketmaster, the ticketing giant led by Mr. Azoff since 2008, and Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promotion company.
Irving Azoff is arguably the most powerful man in the history of American pop music.
On January 25, the Justice Department blessed a merger between Ticketmaster, the ticketing giant led by Mr. Azoff since 2008, and Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promotion company.
Live Nation Entertainment, as the new company is called, is a colossus unlike anything the industry has ever seen.
Ticketmaster has roughly 70 percent of the concert ticket market in the United States and is known for the ever-rising cost of an assortment of tacked-on fees, now as much a part of concert experience as sticky floors and shoving.
Live Nation, led by Michael Rapino, 43, is a roll-up of regional promoters that now runs more than 22,000 events a year, many in the 127 amphitheaters and clubs that the company owns or operates. [br]
Total annual attendance is more than 50 million, according to this extensive feature in the New York Times.
Then there’s the company’s not-so-secret weapon, Front Line Management, a consortium of artist management agencies that Mr. Azoff started cobbling together in 2005.
Front Line shepherds the careers of roughly 200 marquee solo artists and bands, ranging in age from Miley Cyrus to Willie Nelson and including Van Halen, Neil Diamond, Christina Aguilera, Kid Rock, Maroon 5 and the Kings of Leon.
To say this new conglomerate has inspired fear in the live-concert business doesn’t capture the extent of the quaking.
A coalition of consumer groups and independent promoters lobbied hard against the merger,
warning that Live Nation Entertainment could quietly threaten venue owners by hinting that if they dropped Ticketmaster,
they would have a hard time booking Live Nation tours or Front Line talent.
The coalition also said the new company would have something close to a monopolist’s hand when it came to setting ticket fees.
“Now that it’s united with Ticketmaster, the sky will be the limit when it comes to fees,” says Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League. [br]
“It’s not enough to say ‘If you don’t like the high prices, don’t go to the show.’ We need a concert market that has real and robust competition” …
That the Justice Department went along with this marriage surprised many who were expecting the Obama administration to pursue possible antitrust questions more aggressively and take the companies to court.
[EW: Although not us, since it fits in perfectly with Obama’s “rely on the middleman” philosophy 😉 ]
But department officials contend that they extracted real concessions in a consent decree that prohibits an assortment of bullying tactics by the new company.
The department also tried to gin up some competition in the ticketing market by, among other moves, forcing Ticketmaster to sell off a subsidiary called Paciolan in the hopes that it would become a serious competitor.
Maybe that will happen, but for now, Mr. Azoff is as close to a commissioner for live music as this country has ever had.
And he occupies this job at a time when labels, as a force in the market, are withering,
and bands are making the bulk of their income from concerts.
Which is to say, more power than ever is concentrated in the live-music side of the business,
and the business of live music is more concentrated than ever.
