Legal News

The Next Big Antitrust Case: The Live Nation-Ticketmaster Deal

By Ashby Jones

Ticketmaster — the company that so many feel like they can’t live with, or without, it — made headlines this week when it and concert promoter Live Nation announced plans to merge.

And members of Congress made it clear on Wednesday that the company is going to stay in the spotlight for a while. Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Bill Pascrell, Democrats from New York and New Jersey, respectively, wrote Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday to urge the Justice Department to block the merger on antitrust grounds. Schumer said consumers could end up paying higher prices because one company would “have control over every step of the process between fans and artists.” Click here for the WSJ story; here for Bloomberg’s.

The DOJ was quick to respond, opened an investigation of the proposed merger on Wednesday, in what many think will be the first test of the Obama administration’s antitrust policy. Obama has tapped Hogan & Hartson partner and former FTC commissioner Christine Varney to lead the DOJ’s antitrust division.

Ticketmaster Chief Executive Officer Irving Azoff, who would be executive chairman of the combined company (which will drop the Ticketmaster name), defended the merger yesterday. “We think that it will be a more level playing field, and there is no real barrier of entry,” Azoff said on a conference call.

Ticketmaster is repped by Wachtell; Live Nation has tapped Latham & Watkins, according to AmLaw Daily.

We couldn’t help but take notice of the comments made on Tuesday by Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC, which owned Ticketmaster until last year: “Ticketmaster is never perceived to be on the side of the angels because, in fact, there are only so many tickets. . . . when they are finished selling, people get angry that they cannot get tickets.”

We’re not sure that ticket scarcity is really the problem (surcharges, anyone?), but we’ll let further commentary pass.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that IAC owns Ticketmaster.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 12, 2009 (boomark / email).