Really? Does it not suck enough already?

I hope Eddie Vedder's head doesn't explode.

This article just disappeared from the Consumerist front page. What happened?

I heard about this last night. I don't think the Obama administration will allow it. Usually I couldn't care less which companies merge, but Ticketmaster is already the evillest monopoly in the country.

Nooooooooooooooooo!

This should not be allowed.

Well.. I will go from catching 4 concerts a year to 2.. I just cant see paying even more for a ticket.. If you can even get a decent seat, 2 minutes after they tickets "go on sale"..

if you work for ticketmaster.. kill yourself.

i just thank god that almost all the shows I want to see are at small local venues. because i refuse to give any money to those ridiculous crooks.

@razremytuxbuddy: had to edit out the Van Halen logo on the blimp before commenters started going offtopic on the relevance of Van Halen to this story. It's now back and all is right with the Consumerverse.

@Chris Walters: Cool! I was just emailing the link to a friend when it disappeared on me :)

What about TicketMaster getting investigated in NJ for it's TicketsNow (or whatever the hell it's called) Super Scalp-A-Thon?

As separate entities, they were revolting enough to keep me from attending big concerts. We went to 1 a year, if that.

I'll stick to shows where I can buy a ticket at the door. It's a much better deal -- smaller, more intimate shows & no outrageous fees.

Whatever...I quit going to concerts years ago. It's just not worth the bother. With the way Ticketmaster jacks everyone off, it doesn't look like I'll change my mind anytime soon.

Have fun, Live Nation Ticketmaster. Suck that blood, you know you love it!

Ugh. PLEASE break up this monopoly. It's ridiculous.

I do alot of websites for companies that have events... spread the word about BROWN PAPER TICKETS. Awesome fair trade ticket company.

A good case in point: We setup ticketweb (owned by ticketmaster) for a local theater company and after the $800 setup fee, the tickets themselves were only about 8-12 bucks.... but with fee's? 25 or so. Hardley had a single web sale.

@Chongo: Agreed! Here's our Brown Paper Tickets post.

@Russ Savage: Sadly enough, there are a fair number of less-big acts at smaller venues that you have to use TicketMaster for, too (I am thinking of some Great Big Sea and Jonathan Coulton gigs I have attended in the last three years). They're hardly major-football-stadium levels of performer... which in a sense makes it worse, because some fees are flat, and not percentages, so you end up paying at least twice the ticket value.

I like to support performers live and in person but TicketMaster makes it not worthwhile.

Hopefully the Obama administration will not allow this to go through. We have too many near monopolies in this country. Competition cannot exist when one company owns so much of the business. Making them larger will only hurt the negligible consumer choice we currently have.

This was a HUGE advantage to working next door to the main place I go see sporting events/concerts. Walk over at lunch, buy tickets, no crazed fees.

I also quit going to concerts and any other venues that required the purchase of tickets through TM. They are just a blood sucking monopoly and refuse to give them any of my money.

Which part of monopoly do these nitwits not understand?

I think they should call it Masternation....it has a ring to it. I can't help to wonder how big the economic impact will be on concerts this year. Tickets prices are outrageous now, how much will they increase with this merger?

@nicemarmot617: Guess again, Ticketmaster executives contributed to the Obama campaign in a big way. He won't touch them.

Doesn't this seem like it's happening awfully quickly? Live Nation started selling tickets what, a year ago? And it was to specifically get away from TM. Are they already doing so badly in such a short amount of time that this is really a consideration?

"Satan's Boxoffice" was very funny. Well done, Chris.

Before doing the merger, they will need to request clearance from either the FTC or the Department of Justice. As part of that, there will be a public comment period to allow YOU to comment on whether they should allow the merger to go through. A good argument to make is that the merger will increase prices or decrease selection, both of which are generally thought to be anticompetitive, or that it will create monopolies in geographic ticket markets. A bad arguments is that either party is just bad and should be punished.

If you don't want it to go through, write a well-written (be sure to proofread), well-thought-out argument about why it shouldn't. The FTC has said that they find public comments very valuable.

@cmdrsass: As my fiance just pointed out, Wall St gave him a ton of money and it didn't stop him from capping salaries.

@cmdrsass: That is The Chicago Way!

@nicemarmot617: Are you suggesting that the savior of mankind could be influenced by something as trivial as money? That can't be so.

Ticketmaster is the reason I don't go to concerts. That and the lack of talent in music these days. Hell, Ticketmaster won't even do anything about the systematic scalping and go right on selling every single ticket to these idiots like stubhub.

@thezone: They aren't going to go after one of their big contributors. Do you know nothing about how the political game is played?

@thebluepill: Hopefully they put a restriction on increasing or adding fees that lasts a year or two. Yes, it would be better if they don't merge, but we all know the merger is going to happen. The best we can hope for is a few temporary restrictions.

Live Nation is affiliated with... Surprise! Clear Channel. Clear Channel and Government are hand in hand. The merger will happen. I hate everything about both companies. I have to work with them for work and even their employees are douche bags. The cost of the ticket have so many factors. But service charges that cost as much as the ticket.... No thanks. Also stub hub???? Where all of those "SOLD OUT" tickets tend to go. Quote directly from the site : "Company partners include the New York Yankees, Chicago Bears and the University of Southern California along with nearly 60 teams in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and NCAA complemented with music artists like Madonna and companies such as ESPN and American Express."

Looks like you're just screwed.

@MPHinPgh:
Actually if they jacked everyone off, then the fees might not seem so outrageous, but as it is, what they are really doing is giving it to everyone in the backside without any friction reducing salves.

I hate ticketmaster. The fees are absolutely ridiculous. I wanted to buy a pair of tickets the other day, but the fees turned reasonably priced tickets into way out of my budget. $18 in extra fees PER TICKET. That's bullshit.

Also bullshit? When I wanted to buy tickets for a big show and the tickets sold out in 10 seconds but immediately after the site told me too bad there were tickets available on Ticketfast. There's no way someone was able to buy those tickets and put up a ticketfast sale in that amount of time without something shady going on.

Ticketmaster needs MORE competition. Not less.

@semanticantics: You mean the Ticketmaster "subsidary" that, yesterday, when I couldn't get Springsteen tickets at twenty seconds past 10:00 am, already--as luck would have it--had a whole block of 100 level seats to offer me at the low low price of over $900 each?

Yeah, nothing to see here. Move along.

Ridiculous. As it is now I NEVER buy tickets for shows that Ticketmaster is selling, I just flatly refuse their "convenience fees" when the convenience involves me printing out my own tickets then standing in line when I get to the venue anyway.
I, for some stupid reason, thought live nation was better about this. Valentines day there is a concert I would LOVE to see, however, the tickets are $20 with a $8 "Livenation Ticket Fee".
I absolutely refuse to pay that. I just hate that fact that a lot of these places won't allow you to go to the VENUE and buy the tickets. I would rather inconvenience myself and go pick them up than pay LiveNation to print them at my house.

@Ash78: Ticketmaster is evil. I wish Eddie Vedder's lawsuit would've won and snipped this whole thing in the bud back in the day.

Look, they screw over us big time with those $47.50 tickets that wind up costing $63.80. But what about the artist? The artist is supposed to get a percentage of the cost of the ticket, but they only get a percentage of the $47.50 price, not the $63.80 price with the "convenience charge at $10.55, the facility charge at $3.50, sometimes there's parking fees, taxes, etc.,. etc.,. And don't get me started on delivery fees. This is the internet era, all tickets should be printable with those scatter-upc codes airline boarding passes use to prevent counterfeits. So all of those additional service charges and fees is ticketmaster making money that really the artist should be sharing in. But they take them out of the alleged ticket price so that they can pocket all the extra $$$. Convenience fee my nanerpuss.

And IAC InterativeCorp, which owns Ticketmaster also runs Hotels.com. And Hotels.com charges people taxes based on what the customer pays Hotels.com for the room. But then Hotels.com pays the city occupancy tax based on what Hotels.com paid for the room. They charge customers taxes they then stick it in their pocket. They even set aside money identified in their 10K reports each year for if they ever got caught doing this. Only a handful of cities are actually suing them for this, and so for all the cities that aren't, they collected taxes for and never remitted.

IAC InteractiveCorp is one of the most evil companies ever.

And I tried to get Lewis Black tickets for his performance in Beverly Hills on Valentine's Day, but Tickmaster says they don't have any available, but their partner site TicketsNow sure does for 4x the face value of the ticket. Whatever happened to scalping being illegal?

@working class Zer0: Lol...Masternation.

if Sirius/XM has taught us anything, it's that those issues can be ignored at the expense of consumer choice and pricing.

@CaptainCynic: Not surprisingly, I had Darth Vader's theme in my head when I was reading the story.

Looks like it might be a loooong time before I go to a major concert again.

Sirius/XM is a COMPLETELY different story. Both companies were losing money, and the survival of combined entity is in considerable doubt (despite their consolidation savings and raised prices).

TicketBastard is pure evil and must be destroyed.

Sure this sucks, everybody hates both these customers, but lets not ignore the fact that most of the best bands out there today don't play at ticketmaster/ live nation venues. Just this weekend I bought Sebastien Tellier and MONO tickets, and neither one were through TM/LN.

@Cattivella: You know, it's actually not much better over at LiveNation. I got $48 tickets and a $12 per ticket service fee. That's 25%! They're all pretty evil.

i'm still having confusion over the circus tickets i bought the other day. ticketmaster being the only option i had to go through with it because you don't promise your friend's kid a trip to the circus and then renege because of the evil ticketing practices.

i expected the per ticket convenience fee and i wasn't entirely surprised by the per order processing fee - but the $2.50 charge to print my tickets on my printer with the ink i paid for as opposed to picking them up at will call for free - kind of a shocker

maybe this new conglomeration will over extend itself by raising the fees [no reason to keep them low if there's no competition] and end up with no concerts or events at all to ticket because no one will ever be able to afford to go.

Oh man. What a shame. Can't imagine anything good for consumers could come out of this merger.

I was so thankful for the prospect of competition in the online ticketing space -- despite the fact that Live Nation totally botched the recent Phish Summer Tour onsale and actually made me long for Ticketmaster.

You can read my open letter to Nathan Hubbard, Live Nation Ticketing CEO about the debacle here: [jamtopia.com]

It took a long time to write, and now I feel like I may have to write another...

Argh.

TL

People complain and yet they don't vote with their pocketbook. Hate them so much? Then don't go to the concerts that require you to use them. Enough people do that and you'll see prices drop. On top of that, don't buy scalped tickets or any tickets from a second stringer.

@Plates:

Do you, sir, know nothing about producing evidence before going on a Republican/conservative rant, ala Bill'O and Fat Fuck Racist Sexist McGee, aka Rush Limbaugh?

@stevejust: A Representative from New Jersey is calling for an investigation into just that sort of "transaction" when Ticketmaster did that to the fine people of New Jersey trying to buy Springsteen tickets. Ticketmaster should have known better than to f*ck with Jersey girls and boys trying to buy tickets for Bruce. [www.bloomberg.com]

They also did that to people trying to buy tickets to a Christmas concert put on by a radio station here in L.A. (KROQ) that donates the proceeds to charity. Seriously, WTF?

TM and LN have ruined concert-going for me

@CaptainCynic: Same here. I haven't paid for a concert ticket in something like 5 years+ for those same reasons. Thankfully I have friends who get tickets for free... although most concerts typically don't live up to expectations.

@Cattivella: Just wait until they start charging you for that second piece of luggage... oh wait, now I'm getting ticketmaster confused with US Airlines.