Senators’ concerns pertaining merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster

Senators gave the CEOs of the two largest live events and ticket sales companies Live Nation and Ticketmaster a rather skeptical reception. In the course of the hearing Sen. Charles Schumer urged Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff to sell TicketsNow whose actions incurred public censure just before the merger was announced.

The incident came to the profiteering on the tickets when fans of Bruce Springsteen who signed on to Ticketmaster were advised that the tickets were sold out and that they still could buy them with the reseller that had considerably more expensive tickets. The explanation of Ticketmaster saying that it was a computer glitch had no impression on Schumer who asked Azoff to sell the subsidiary.

Meantime Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota were very concerned about high prices of concert tickets. In this regard Azoff and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino pointed to the fact that music piracy had changed the economics of the industry -- artists no longer toured to sell albums -- and the faltering U.S. economy worsened matters.

"I can hope that the economy gets better or I can seek a more proactive approach to protect our employees, reward our shareholders and better service artists and fans," said Rapino.

Thereby the two CEOs see this ‘proactive measure’ in merging the world's largest concert promoting company with the top U.S. ticket seller.