

Reilly’s Right - Tickets Are Cheap - fallentimes
http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2009/03/08/reillys-right-tickets-are-cheap/

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tptacek
Bill Wyman has been reporting this story at <http://hitsville.org> (mostly in
the context of the LN/TM merger); for instance, liveblogged from the senate
hearing:

%< \----------------

(R-ME) Sherman: If there’s ten thousand seats in the area, are you selling
10,000 tickets?

(TM CEO) Azoff: Never. On average we might see 80 or 85 percent of the seats.

Sherman: Are those the good ones or the bad ones you’re not getting?

Azoff: The vast majority of the best seats in the house.

%< \----------------

From a later article:

[..]

Hmm .. it sems like an almost insoluble economic problem. They have inventory
… it’s sitting on a shelf … and it’s highly perishable—worthless at a minute
after showtime.

Whatever can be done?

The article crystalized a feeling that I had several times while watching the
hearings on the merger: Why does Live Nation need to merge with Ticketmaster
to deal with the alleged broken concert industry?

In this case, why couldn’t it just, you know, sell the farther-back seats for
less money?

[...]

Indeed, I recently got an email from someone who added an additional wrinkle:
Paraphrased, the point was simply that LN controls too many goddamn venues.

Why are the company’s bookers not putting acts in smaller rooms? _Because LN
has to keep its own buildings in action, even if they’re too big for the
artist in question._ [em. orig.]

Are these guys squirrelly or what?

~~~
fallentimes
It's crazy. Both companies are so intertwined that no one in the TM/LN camps
knows what to do. Acting one way hurts them the other way. LN is in especially
big trouble because of all the lucrative "360" deals they agreed too:

[http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081218/u2s-live-nation-
dea...](http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081218/u2s-live-nation-deal-is-good-
for-madonna-bad-for-investors/)

There are many parallels with the the outrageous deals that Sirius Radio
signed:

[http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=20090212_sirius_radio_bank...](http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=20090212_sirius_radio_bankruptcy_nfl_mlb_deals_in_trouble.htm)

