Live Nation Prepares for Ticketing Venture with New Hire
7/1/08, 4:04 pm EST


Live Nation moved a step closer to becoming its own ticketing entity when their contract ends with Ticketmaster at year’s end by hiring a chief executive to oversee the ticketing unit. Nathan Hubbard was hired as CEO of the new division after serving in the same position at Musictoday, another ticketing company Live Nation purchased in 2006. Hubbard is expected to build a platform that will enable Live Nation to handle the expected 20 million tickets it intends on selling. The launch of the ticketing unit would be the final phase Live Nation plotted out when signing artists like Madonna and Jay-Z to all-encompassing 360 deals, as well as give Ticketmaster its first true competitor.

It's about fuckin time, sorta.

1 big evil corporation is a monopoly, but that doesn't mean 2 big evil corporations is competition.

they're gonna be just as shitty, don't worry

hey, all they have to do is cut the "service charges" by at least half and they'll do right by me.

so...from a monopoly to a duopoly. i don't see this improving things.

Exactly. I believe it was livenation that charged me $11 to park at Camden this year.

every livenation ticket i've ever gotten has been as ricockulously marked up as ticketbastards. now we have two companies to ruin it for us

unless both companies are selling tickets to the same event, it's still kind of a monopoly.

If my ticket buying is limited to baseball games, and TM is the only one selling tickets to those games, it's still a monopoly.

Well of course LN isn't going to run roughshot over the ticket industry as TM has signed contracts with many, many venues to be their exclusive ticket sellers. Until those agreements expire, TM will still be the main ticket distributor.

yeah, but there could be 20 of these companies...as long as only one gets to sell tickets to each event - there's still a monopoly in the eyes of the consumer. Seems like the primary beneficiaries of this would be the venues.

Live Nation, Ticketmaster and United Concerts all have ridiculously marked up fees and services.

You want a 20 dollar ticket to a concert in a run down venue, but then you get your tickets and there is like $2 here, $4, there, extra $5 and other assorted fees. making the total price almost double the price of the show.

they're pretty much gonna battle it out to see who can charge more and fuck everyone over. cant wait.

I don't want to start a new thread so I'm adding this here, although maybe its applicable in the Bruce Springsteen/Ticketmaster one given the trouble his fans had with price gouging during his recent tour sales.

Billy Joel and Elton John are performing this summer in DC at Nationals Park in mid July. Tickets went on sale this morning directly through Live Nation's website which basically redirected you to Tickets.com, the same company that, at Ticketmaster's referral, gouged Springsteen fans.

So I click on the "Buy Tickets" link at 10:00 sharp. I get put in a virtual waiting room. 20 minutes go buy with the page automatically refreshing every 15 seconds before I get the chance to buy tickets. I'm buying for my entire family. I select the price and quantity and get a webpage browser error. Obviously, Live Nation isn't capable of handling the large demand. Refreshing or clicking the back button yields the same results and eventually I get put back in the waiting room. This shit happened 15 to 20 times over the course of an hour until a page poped up saying Tickets.com was down due to "scheduled maintenance." So the site crashed. It happens.

5 minutes later, its back online and running smoothly. No virtual waiting room. I was directed right to the selection page. But now, the prices have changed. Seats were initially in three tiers. They were listed approximately at $180, $100, and $55 when they went on sale. After the site went down and came back up, seats were now $180, $100... and $100. The 3rd tier prices fucking changed. I initially wanted 5 tickets in the second tier, so I clicked on them and got through. The seats Tickets.com gave me where nosebleeds. Essentially, I was given 3rd tier seats at 2nd tier prices.

Now, I got them because its for a special family occasion, and the service charges alone were the price of a 6th ticket, but after Bruce's fans were handcuffed and forced to pay more through Tickets.com when Ticketmaster.com still had less expensive seats available, its appauling to see that patrons will continue to be screwed by this behemoth.

I already wrote something similar to customer service and I'll send a formal letter once I find a definitive address, but I just wanted to add my two cents to the growing mass of disgruntled concert-goers out there.

"This [injustice] will not stand, man." - The Dude

I'm not defending any of these shady operations but Tickets.com was not responsible for the Springsteen incident. That involved Ticketmaster linking to TicketsNow.com, which is more or less an official resale (read: scalper) site, at the time of the initial on-sale. People wanted tickets and in the heat of the moment didn't pay attention to the fact that a) they were no longer using Ticketmaster.com and b) the ticket prices were all well over face value.

As for your show, it looks like the venue is handled by Tickets.com, not LiveNation. LiveNation was just telling you where you could purchase tickets. Just for kicks, I tried to pull tickets just now and was offered 4 level 2 tickets in section 314. Not the upper-most level but still pretty far from the stage. Unless you were given something in the top half of the 400 sections, I doubt you were over charged. Sure it sucks and the fees are ridiculous but there's nothing you can do short of skipping the show. I know it's not on the same price level but I recently paid over 50% in fees on a $15 ticket. $8 for them to mail me a ticket, very convenient.