Archive for: live nation
Live Nation are getting a big hold on offline ticket sales by striking a deal that allows them to sell tickets for their events in WalMart stores all over the USA. The programme will open with flagship stores in big cities like Dallas and L.A. before being rolled out nationwide. Live Nation already sells tickets through Blockbuster stores, so the method is tried and tested. WalMart has previously made exclusive deals with bands like Kiss and the Eagles to sell their music through WalMart’s stores only, giving customers a reason to visit. Between them, Live Nation and WalMart have massive marketing power in the states, and globally through their proxies ASDA and Ticketmaster (soon to be absorbed into a merged company with Live Nation), and could orchestrate super-360 deals, controlling every aspect of physical, digital and live sales for an artist.
Lady GaGa will play North American and European arenas this year and Live Nation Entertainment’s global touring division will take the reins as promoter/producer.
Lady GaGa is set to begin a run of dates in the U.K. (promoted by AEG Live) on Feb. 18 at the MEN Arena in Manchester, followed by shows in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, which are all almost sold out. According to sources, it is now expected that the artist will play arenas in Europe some time this spring, then North American arenas in the summer.
Live Nation has previous run heavy international tours for both U2 and Madonna, so Lady GaGa will be in good hands.
Liberty Media, an investment capital fund that owns substantial stakes in companies like Sirius XM radio and Time Warner, has just put in a bid to buy $410,400,000 worth of Live Nation’s stock, at $12 per share. the offer has yet to be accepted, but it’s a proof of faith in Live Nation’s post-merger abilities, and a reasonable mark-up on the current market price of $11.49 a share. Liberty could perhaps help themselves by making a tie between Sirius and Live Nation, two companies in which they would have a holding were this bid accepted, co-promoting acts for mutual benefit, as HMV and Luminar obviously intend to do.
After months of speculation and reels of red tape, the world’s biggest live music company has been created by the combination of the two giants Ticketmaster and Live Nation have finally secured approval from the necessary legal bodies to go ahead with their merger. The company formed is now called Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., and TKTM’s stock ceased trading at close on the 25th. According to Reuters, common stock in Ticketmaster will be exchanged for 1.474 shares of stock in the new entity. This news has seen a massive jump in the share price of both companies, and will undoubtedly have a seismic effect throughout the live music world over the coming year.
Live Nation’s shareholder’s have voted to approve the merger between their company and Ticketmaster. You can read the SEC filing here – the news was at first positively recieved, but now indications are that the stock market is going slightly cold on the two closely linked companies, with a 2% fall yesterday.
Hypebot reports that the US Justice Department is close to a positive ruling on whether or not to allow a merger between live music giants Live Nation (LYV) and Ticket Master (TKTM). The deal has already been approved by UK bodies, and if it goes ahead will create the biggest live music and ticket sales company in the world (hence the scrutiny from monopoly legislators). Shares in both companies have jumped more than 3.5% after this hopeful news, but are still more than a third down on their pre-crash values (Aug ’08).
The live music industry has seen a difficult couple of years, with a lot of smaller festivals being postponed or cancelled – consolidation makes a lot of sense for these two big companies, and we’ve seen them selling underperforming assets and shedding debt, I’d guess the upshot will be more uniform ticket prices, and a smaller range of venues being played by massive artists as they get signed to lucrative exclusives by the newborn giant as it exploits the new confidence inevitably born of being the biggest player in the market. 
Snapshot via Google's Finance service
The two live entertainment giants released profit reports today, Ticketmaster having gained on last year’s figures, and Live Nation having declined slightly, year on year. The real news here is that talks for the merging of the two companies are looking positive, and the deal is looked for at the beginning of next year, a forecast that has seen the stock price of both companies jump by almost 10% in a single morning’s trading. Both companies are capped at over $600m, and will look for massive marketing and staffing synergies from a merger, hopefully amking them both a lot more profitable. You can read Live Nation’s press releases and filings here: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=194146&p=irol-irhome
It remains to be seen whether this is good news for the gig-going public, as there’ll be almost no-one in the UK market able to compete with the giant that’s created for running really big mainstream gigs, and a lack of competition means there’s no need to keep ticket prices down and beat your neighbour.
You know it’s tough all over when one of the biggest success stories in recent years is flogging the silver to reduce it’s debts. Live Nation, the biggest live music company in the States, who have been signing massive deals all over in the past couple of years, including those with Madonna, U2 and Jay-Z. Now the company has divested itself of three profitable London venues; The Lyceum, the Apollo Victoria and The Dominion. The sale is reportedly worth $160 million to the company, allowing them to ‘de-lever’ their balance sheet, or in laymans terms, reduce the operating debt that was previously balanced against the worth of the companies assets. So why the slim-down? Last month there was opposition from the Office of Fair Trading to a proposed merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation, a move which if allowed to go ahead would create a ‘near monopoly’ in the live music market, the fear being that the merged entity could essentially set the price of live music in the majority of venues across the country without fear of being undercut by any serious opposition, effectively eliminating any threat of competition (sorry if this is baby-speak).
Of course, if one wanted to take a less pessimistic view of Live Nation’s cash raising activities in the context of the proposed Ticketmaster deal, one could comment that the two companies’ stock prices have been essentially mirroring one another since the move was first posited at the beginning of the year, and it’s possible that Live Nation is trying to break this match, make the balance sheets look better and get a little more cash in the coffers, gain a stronger stock price and share buying war chest in advance of permission being granted by the OFC (nothing but the wildest speculation, of course!).
Live Nation has entered into a strategic alliance with South Africa’s BIG Concerts. BIG concerts will now serve as the exclusive promotion partner for Live Nation in South Africa.
BIG Concerts sells more than 400,000 tickets per year, according to a news release from Live Nation. The 20-year-old company, which was founded by industry veteran Attie van Wyk, promotes concerts in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.
“This alliance provides us with a world class partner to expand our global concert platform into South Africa as the region emerges as an increasingly important touring destination for artists,” Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino said in a statement. “This partnership is an example of the progress we are making in identifying growth markets to strategically monetize our tours on a global scale.”
