Brooklyn Vegan commented on the recent interview between USA Today and Barry Diller, CEO of InterActiveCorp, parent company of Ticketmaster (as well as Match.com, Citysearch, CollegeHumor, and Evite). As part of the post, Brooklyn Vegan added relevant parts of the interview in which Diller commented on the proposed Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. Diller makes the same vague argument that Billy Corgan made when he testified in front of Congress in support of the same merger; basically, that the merger will help less established acts reach a larger audience:
USA TODAY: Live Nation is the country's largest owner of arenas. Ticketmaster is the largest ticketing company and has deals with several stars. Why shouldn't we be nervous about seeing them get together?BARRY DILLER: Well, you can be nervous all you wish. It sounds awfully arrogant. It's not meant that way. The thing is: These companies don't compete with each other directly. We don't own venues as Live Nation does. And Live Nation just entered the ticketing business but they don't compete with us at this point. So, it's vertical, and there's nothing legally wrong with vertical.
The issue is: Will consumers pay more? No. I actually think that what the combination will do will allow us to develop what was really lacking. The big players are getting rather old. The Rolling Stones are out there now. What we don't have is a great development process for new talent.
The recorded music business now is, in a sense, the loss leader for live entertainment. And the truth is that they should have symbiotic relationships, and I think we can bring that. But it's under review at the Justice Department and we'll know whenever they get around to dealing with this.
USA TODAY: Fleetwood Mac will be playing in St. Louis in a couple weeks. You can get a midpriced ticket for about $77, then there's a convenience charge of $9.70, a building facility charge of $2.50, and for the privilege of printing out my own ticket at home, I've got to pay you $2.50.
BARRY DILLER: I would tell you what a great privilege it is for you to be able to do that and how much infrastructure we had to create and desks we had to make in order for you to do that. But here's the thing: Ticketmaster is the definition of an unloved company. Many more people are denied tickets than we are able to give them because there are only so many seats in the house.
The problem with the ticketing business is: It's the essence of non-transparency. And the reason is that everybody has an ax to grind. Artists do not want consumers to know that they have a take of different parts of the ticketing package. People who own venues want to put in service charges. So I think there's going to be legislation which is going to force transparency, and I think that would be great for everybody.
In response to the post, I left the following comment:
What Diller is failing to point out is that Ticketmaster's biggest source of competition is artists booking their own concerts. Without control of the venues, Ticketmaster cannot control a major act, like, say, Radiohead, from booking their own shows and offering much lower ticket prices (bc Radiohead has no high overhead to make up for in ticket price). But once Ticketmaster can take away the major venues by controlling Live Nation, then major acts will be forced to use their services in order to perform in those venues.
The fact is, there is more value in tickets than the ticket price. This is evident if you've ever purchased a ticket from Craigslist or a Tickethub type vendor. Once there is less fear of competition from bands independently booking their own shows you can bet that Ticketmaster will immediately try to realize that lost value by raising ticket prices even further.
MP3: Iron And Wine - The Trapeze Swinger.mp3
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