Live Nation Takes On Ticketmaster Over High Fees

We’ve been hearing rumors of this for several months, but now the riff has gone public.  Concert giant Live Nation is fighting with Ticketmaster to lower ticketing fees as part of an overall effort to bring prices down and encourage more concert attendance.  Current Ticketmaster fees can add 25%- 35% to the price of a ticket. LA Times.  "We can grow this industry by lowering prices." But Tickemaster has exclusive contracts with most of the nations concert venues and seems in no hurry to give up the more than $1 billion in fees that it collected last year. 

"Seventy percent of people didn’t go to a concert last year, and even the average concert fan only attends about two shows a year," Live Nation head Michael Rapino told the

On the other hand Live Nation controls the concerts and owns some of the venues, and last month bought into MusicToday which has it’s own fan-friendly ticketing system.  A less well-known part of the Live Nation portfolio is the Next Ticketing system (re-named Live Nation Ticketing) which it purchased several years ago as part of Boston’s Tea Party Concerts headed by Don Law.  This system already handles a number of venues in new England and it’s underlying technology could be used to expand nationally.