Corporate & Securities Law

Ticketmaster ? Live Nation Merger Approved With Conditions

By David Fischer

DOJ approved the merger with some conditions.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

Under the concessions demanded by the DOJ, Ticketmaster’s Paciolan division, which sells tickets to college sporting events, is to be sold to a unit of Comcast. The merged company also is barred from retaliating against venue operators that want to use ticketing services from competitors. For instance, the merged company would be prevented from blocking artists it represents from playing in those venues.

The companies also will be required to offer ticketing and concert-promotion services separately, rather than as a bundle. And divisions of the company won’t be allowed to share certain kinds of data so as to reduce the competitive edge afforded by its vast scope.

Many antitrust lawyers believed the deal was about the best the Justice Department could have hoped for, given the circumstances. It is far more difficult for prosecutors to develop a compelling case that competition would be harmed as a result of such a vertical merger?in which the companies involved operate at different stages in the supply chain?than in a horizontal merger involving direct competitors. Had the Justice Department brought a tricky vertical case and lost, these lawyers said, they would have ended up with nothing.

DOJ’s documents on the case can be found online.

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Full post as published by Antitrust Review on January 26, 2010 (boomark / email).