In a battle of two corporate behemoths, Live Nation continues to face off with Ticketmaster for the extremely lucrative live entertainment ticketing business. Live Nation scored a major victory in the latest round by making a five-year deal with a third corporate giant, SMG, to sell tickets at most of the SMG’s facilities.
Live Nation ticketing expects to sell 10 million tickets in their first year of operation which will probably start in the middle of 2009 when their current deal with Ticketmaster expires. That number should jump dramatically in the second and third year of operations for LN Ticketing. We haven’t heard the last of this war.
Let’s take another look at what’s happening elsewhere:
- You can watch Farm Aid 2008 live on Direct TV’s The 101
- Look for the Fillmore: The Last Days DVD on November 11
- Alex Young of CoS previews this year’s Halloween concerts
- Watch moe., the Biscuits, K-Dub, String Cheese Incident and other jammers on your cell phone thanks to the Relix VCast Channel
- SongVest plans to auction rights to parts of 18 hit songs
- Matthew Sweet talks to JamBase about his career [via LHB]
- Crawdaddy reprints an interview with members of The Band
One more item before we go: The Mirage in Las Vegas recently unveiled details of a $25 million facelift for their world famous faux volcano. The 20-year old landmark’s getting a slew of fireball-throwing devices that will be choreographed to erupt on cue with a soundtrack co-composed by the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart. For the Mirage’s sake, let’s hope there’s no rapping involved. [via The AP]
2 Responses
Fire in the Fauxcano!
Long odds gambler, what you standin’ there for?
Get up, get out, get out of the door
They’re playin Dead music on the casino floor
Drowned in your cashflow and Dead to the core.
A highroller with matches is loose on the town
Takes a whole pail of water just to cool him down.
Fire! fire on the mountain!
Almost a bust still you don’t feel the heat
It takes all you got not to puke in the street.
The buffet’s a livin, we all gotta eat
You’re queued up alone, there’s no one to compete.
If this was a bus’ness, well, that I could do
More than reunion tours when your dreams come true.
Fire! fire on the mountain!
Long odds gambler, what you holdin out for?
Caught with no condom and no cash for the whore.
The stink on your name has now spread to the floor
You gave all you had. why you wanna give more?
The more that you give, the more we will take
To the good times beyond which you really can’t fake.
Fire! fire on the mountain!