In what might initially appear to be a blow to artists such as Bruce Springsteen, who bemoaned the proposed merger, the Justice Department gave tentative approval today to the merger of Ticketmaster, the widely reviled concert ticket company, and to LiveNation, an entertainment conglomerate whose click-pack-and-ship division is headquartered in the Charlottesville-area community of Crozet and known as MusicToday. The
L.A. Times reports that Ticketmaster would have to license its ticketing technology. Both companies shares climbed 15 percent on the news. –
post amended 11:50am Tuesday, February 2 to remove this phrase from the headline: “What’s good for Capshaw… ” A cursory glance at the annual reports of LiveNation shows that LiveNation bought 51% of Coran Capshaw’s MusicToday in September 2006 and the remaining 49% in July 2007. If Capshaw owns any shares of LiveNation, we don’t know about it.
