Upcoming Congressional Hearings

The New Jersey Star-Ledger is reporting that the United States Congress will be holding two hearings next week to evaluate the proposed merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

The article states: “The Senate Subcommittee on Anti-trust will convene Tuesday (Feb. 24), and the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competitive policy will hold its hearing Feb. 26. Witness lists were not released.”

Ticketnews.com is also reporting that Ticketmaster shareholders feel their stocks were undervalued and have filed a class action lawsuit with the hopes the lawsuit will block the merger.

Reuters is reporting a new twist to the merger:

The latest concern is that the shrinking number of independent promoters, many of which use Ticketmaster for selling seats, fear that the company’s deal with the world’s biggest promoting company, Live Nation, would hurt the independents.

A representative for one of Live Nation’s bigger rivals, which asked to remain unidentified, said the merger was “a major concern” because Live Nation would gain access to confidential sales data.

“Plus the fact that we would be helping to feed a competitor, since they would be making money from selling tickets to our events,” the person wrote in an email to Reuters.

Dante Ferando, owner of the Black Cat rock bar in Washington, said the merger would hurt his ability to compete.

“Your ticket sales include your entire list of customers — names, addresses, zip codes — and how many tickets you sold to a certain band, and how many tickets you sold,” he said. “Suddenly Live Nation has access to your ticket information. That’s not the kind of stuff that you want to hand to your competition on a silver platter.”

Hopefully the hearings will be televised on one of the C-SPAN channels.

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