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☆ Live Nation posts $3.1 billion revenue and record attendance despite controversies Live Nation posts $3.1 billion revenue and record attendance despite controversies
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Live Nation posted a record $3.1 billion in revenue – up 73% from last year – in the first quarter of 2023, despite possible regulation and tremendous fallout from botched Ticketmaster sales for the Taylor Swift Eras tour. In an earnings release, the ticket-industry giant said over 19 million people attended events across 45 countries in the first quarter. In a single day last November, more than two million Taylor Swift tickets were sold on Live Nation’s Ticketmaster, a record for any artist. Live Nation stock rose about 15% on the news, to close at about $77 a share. Congressional hearingsLawmakers grilled Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold in a three-hour hearing in January, alleging the ticketing giant wields too much monopolistic control over the industry.

☆ Bipartisan Senate bill would push ticket sellers to disclose fees upfront
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Chelsey Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

You also have the option of purchasing live tickets that can be printed directly from your computer or wireless device. WASHINGTON — Swifties, the BeyHive and Cure fans may have a reason to rejoice: Senators on Wednesday are set to introduce a bipartisan bill targeting hidden ticket fees for live events. Dubbed the Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act, the measure would require ticketing merchants to disclose upfront full ticket prices, including fees, for concerts, sporting events and other large gatherings. Ticket fees can comprise 21% to as much as 58% of the total cost of tickets, according to a statement from the committee. The bill aims to promote competition "by delivering ticket fee and speculative ticket transparency for the benefit of all consumers," the committee said.

☆ Concert tickets resold on SeatGeek have doubled in price over the last 5 years to to an average of $252 per ticket
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Grace Mayer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Concert fans buying resale tickets could be paying more than double what prices were five years ago. That means the average price of a concert ticket resold on SeatGeek has climbed from $125 in 2019 to $252 in 2023, the company confirmed to Insider. For resold Taylor Swift tickets, the average price is $1,311, per SeatGeek. One 31-year-old fan bought two resale Swift tickets for $5,500, Insider's Juliana Kaplan reported, which she said she later regretted. That was still lower than the rate other resold tickets were going for.

☆ The 5 absolute worst ways to earn passive income, according to a 6-figure entrepreneur who's tried dozens of them
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Jen Glantz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Flipping products, making money through ads, and credit-card bonuses were a waste of her time. At first, I was making passive income as the stocks increased in value, and I sold off a few shares to make a profit. Trying to make passive income in the stock market is risky, especially when you're someone who doesn't fully understand it. In the end, this passive income stream proved to be stressful, time-consuming, and risky. After earning those bonus points, I redeemed them for cash or statement credits, and called that passive income.

☆ Drake is going on tour for the first time in 4 years and fans are outraged at the high prices
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-18 | by ( Jordan Hart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tickets were reportedly on sale for as low as $69, but fans say they witnessed prices starting at $200 for upper-level seating. While ticket prices were advertised starting at $69 on Ticketmaster, fans were quick to share videos showing upper-level seats on sale for $200. Other tweets blamed Ticketmaster for the high prices despite Drake's tickets being released on at least one other ticket outlet. "$200+ for nosebleed drake tickets is criminal…. Like Drake and Beyoncé, fans of Taylor Swift have also expressed outrage at difficulty to obtain tickets and high prices to her 2023 Eras tour.

☆ Ticketmaster under fire: 6 takeaways from hearing over Taylor Swift concert fiasco
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

The venues controlled by Live Nation set fees that are “consistent with the other venues in the marketplace,” he said. Entertainment industry pushes back at Ticketmaster’s dominanceMembers of the entertainment industry and one rival spoke out against Ticketmaster’s dominance in the industry. Andrew Harnik/APClyde Lawrence, a singer-songwriter on the witness panel, explained how the company acts as a promoter, a venue and the ticketing company, which eats into performing artists’ revenues. Artists, he said, have no leverage over Live Nation. Lawmaker says Ticketmaster merger should ‘be on the table’Lawmakers repeatedly questioned the US government’s past handling of the Live Nation merger with Ticketmaster.

☆ Ticketmaster-parent exec to blame 'industrial-scale ticket scalping' in testimony
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The president of Ticketmaster parent Live Nation (LYV.N), Joe Berchtold, is expected to testify on Tuesday before Congress that "industrial-scale ticket scalping" was to blame for the company's problems late last year in managing the sale of Taylor Swift concert tickets. Ticketmaster, which has been unpopular with fans for years, has drawn fresh heat from U.S. lawmakers over how it handled ticket sales for Swift's "Eras" tour, her first in five years. Experts say that Ticketmaster commands more than 70% market share of primary ticket services for major U.S. concert venues. In November, Ticketmaster canceled a planned ticket sale to the general public for Swift's tour after more than 3.5 billion requests from fans, bots and scalpers overwhelmed its website. A previous Ticketmaster dispute with the Justice Department culminated in a December 2019 settlement extending the consent agreement into 2025.

☆ Live Nation president apologizes to Taylor Swift and her fans for ticketing fiasco and says the industry is still competitive
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold apologized to Taylor Swift and fans for the ticket debacle. Berchtold said that the company faced bot attacks during the Swift ticket sale, impacting service, and apologized to Swift and fans. This power over the entire live entertainment industry allows Live Nation to maintain its monopolistic interests over the primary ticketing market," Groetzinger said. "This is all a definition of monopoly, because Live Nation is so powerful that it doesn't even need to exert pressure," Klobuchar said. Lawrence, who's written for the New York Times on Live Nation and its impact on artists, said Live Nation often functions as three different things: promoter, venue, and ticketing company.

☆ Live Nation exec will face lawmakers about Taylor Swift concert tickets fiasco
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Parija Kavilanz | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” Swift wrote on Instagram in November. The mergerCriticism of Ticketmaster’s dominance dates back decades, but the Swift ticketing incident has once again turned that issue into a dinner table discussion at many households. Concert promoter Live Nation and ticketing company Ticketmaster, two of the largest companies in the concert business, announced their merger in 2009. ‘Customers are the ones that pay the price’While irate fans were left scrambling to wade through the Swift ticket confusion, their collective anger caught lawmakers’ attention. To me, what happened with the Swift concert tickets was not necessarily the result of Ticketmaster being the dominant player in the industry,” he said.

☆ Live Nation CFO defends Ticketmaster, blames bots for Taylor Swift debacle
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( David Shepardson | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

FILE PHOTO: The logo for Live Nation Entertainment is displayed on a screen on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 3, 2019. Ticketmaster has come under harsh criticism from fans and lawmakers, accusing it of having too much control over the market for concert tickets. Berchtold’s testimony said Live Nation has invested over $1 billion over the years to improve Ticketmaster. “Whether it meets the legal definition of a monopoly or not, Live Nation’s control of the live music ecosystem is staggering.”Ticketmaster has denied any anti-competitive practices and remains under a consent decree with the Justice Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation. Live Nation included letters of support with its testimony including one from singer Garth Brooks who asked” My question is, as a country, why don’t we just make scalping illegal?

☆ Live Nation CFO to testify in Senate after Taylor Swift ticketing woes
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( David Shepardson | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

FILE PHOTO: The logo for Live Nation Entertainment is displayed on a screen on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 3, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermidWASHINGTON (Reuters) -Live Nation Entertainment President and Chief Financial Officer Joe Berchtold will testify at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday after its Ticketmaster’s unit had problems managing the sale of Taylor Swift concert tickets, the committee said. Live Nation did not immediately comment. “As Live Nation leverages its power across the concert ecosystem to increase its profits, concertgoers see higher prices, and artists experience challenging touring dynamics,” Lawrence wrote in a New York Times essay last month. In November, Ticketmaster denied any anti-competitive practices and noted it remained under a consent decree with the Justice Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation.

☆ KKR's top tech exec details the firm's 3-year migration to the public cloud, and how the PE giant is leveraging the tech to streamline how deals get done
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

KKR is moving its technology and infrastructure to the public cloud by year end. The finish line is in sight for Emilia Sherifova, KKR's top tech exec who is spearheading the firm's multi-year migration to the public cloud. KKR's cloud migration has been years in the making. Under Sherifova, KKR has more than doubled its number of cloud-focused engineers, she said, declining to specify numbers. No longer are regulatory and security concerns barring finance players from moving mission-critical systems, like exchanges' matching engines and banks' core banking platforms, to the public cloud.

☆ Why the NFL will barely lose any money from canceling the Bills-Bengals game
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Chris Isidore | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

The average ticket price for a non-premium seat to a Bengals game is about $88, the cheapest in the NFL, according to Team Marketing Reports, which tracks ticket prices. TMR estimates that the cost of all the tickets, both regular and premium seats, for the game came to about $6.7 million. If it opted to replay or continue the postponed game, the NFL almost certainly would have needed to push back the playoffs that are set to start next weekend. That game likely would have received enormous fan interest and ratings approximating those of a playoff game or Super Bowl. That means that ticketholders will lose the profit they might have received from selling the tickets, but those who bought the tickets won’t be hit with the difference between what they paid, and what they could get in a refund.

☆ How Gerry Cardinale became the go-to dealmaker for the likes of the Yankees, AC Milan, and Ben Affleck
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Hayley Cuccinello | Dakin Campbell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +20 min

He bought the soccer club AC Milan in August, earning the attention of the Italian press. This past spring, AC Milan won its first national title in 11 years. Claudio Villa/AC Milan via Getty Images Show less Cardinale at a training session for AC Milan. For instance, the teams sell each other's merchandise in their stadiums, and the YES Network airs AC Milan games. "Now we have a new phase of expansion and internationalization of AC Milan with Gerry."

☆ As tech companies pull back on spending, big office holiday parties are on the chopping block
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Jordan Parker Erb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Apparently, some tech workers are also missing their companies' holiday festivities — but not because they're bopping around in the Mountain West. As tech companies pull back on spending, big office holiday parties are on the chopping block. Cost-cutting is coming for startups — and big office holiday parties are first on the list. For startup founders and venture capitalists, the office holiday party is a December tradition. But this year, holiday parties in startup-land look a little different.

☆ It's not just Taylor Swift. Musicians describe the 'demented struggle' of touring in a shrinking industry where one giant company sells the tickets for most major venues.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

On top of that, the Justice Department is reportedly investigating the 2010 merger of industry leaders Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Live Nation Entertainment said in a statement that it owns and operates just over 100 of the nearly 4,000 total live music venues in the United States. "Put simply, artists, venues, and consumers should no longer be at the mercy of a single seller," Sens. At the same time, Live Nation Entertainment is seeing a record year due to more shows than ever. "We always welcome the opportunity to discuss important issues facing the live entertainment industry," Live Nation said in a statement.

☆ A solo Ticketmaster might attract financial fans
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Jennifer Saba | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

NEW YORK, Dec 15 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The drums are beating louder for a breakup of Live Nation Entertainment (LYV.N). For Live Nation, it’s not entirely clear that the flywheel is spinning smoothly. Live Nation says it is so dominant because it’s so much better than the competition. Putting the complicated legal and regulatory questions aside, there’s probably a financial case for Ticketmaster to become a solo act. Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster in 2010.

[1/3] Taylor Swift poses on the red carpet for the 2022 MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs) at the PSD Bank Dome in Duesseldorf, Germany, November 13, 2022. The company said it is working to shore up its technology "for the new bar that has been set by demand for the Taylor Swift's Eras Tour". Chaos around the Swift tour prompted calls for the U.S. government to break up the company. For those who did not get tickets to the Eras tour, Swift said her hope was to provide "more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs." She has promised hits from albums spanning her career on the Eras tour.

☆ I got Web3 VIP access to see Jack Harlow in concert through an NFT club called Dancing Seahorse. But the experience felt very Web2 — and that's exactly what the company's CEO wants.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-14 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The VIP suite hosted by Dancing Seahorse offered a good but not spectacular view of the stage. Until five months ago, when he cofounded Dancing Seahorse, Nahai wasn't really into crypto or Web3, he told me. Dancing Seahorse's suite drew a crypto-curious crowd. From left: Melanie McClain; Phillip Hale-Christofi, Dancing Seahorse's head of events and experiences; and Ladidai. It was perhaps no coincidence, then, that Dancing Seahorse's suite drew a pretty crypto-curious crowd.

☆ Meet Michael Klausner, the Stanford law professor who is the biggest critic of the SPAC deal craze — and believes its crash was 'completely predictable'
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-23 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Many SPAC deals announced last year have been having a hard time closing. Now, the dismal fates of dozens of SPAC deals announced during last year's SPAC frenzy seem to vindicate his analysis. And others this year, like men's grooming brand Manscaped, SeatGeek, the live event ticket search engine, and business news outlet, Forbes, have all scrapped their SPAC deals to go public. Klausner has been paying attention to SPAC deals for a few years. Of the 275 deals announced in 2021, 240 have closed, according to Dealogic data.

☆ SPACs are running out of time to close dozens of deals with startups that hoped to go public. Here's why they're being delayed and may not get done.
▼ + stars: | 2022-08-22 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

SPAC mergers announced last year have yet to close and are up against the clock. In 2021 alone, they raised nearly $163 billion, and 275 merger deals were announced, according to data from Dealogic. Several SPAC mergers are now in limbo, among them embattled mortgage startup Better.com, fintech company Aspiration, and crypto startup Bullish, which all announced their SPAC mergers more than a year ago. Those price tags are no longer reliable as they've become outdated, adding an extra challenge to securing financing to close deals during a downturn, experts said. Deadlines to close SPAC mergers can vary depending on the lifespan of the blank-check company in question, but typically range from a year to two years.

☆ A top digital-talent exec at WME breaks down the big influencer deals of 2019 and what he's looking for in 2020, from TikTok to touring
▼ + stars: | 2020-01-14 | by ( Amanda Perelli | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Creators on TikTok are surging in the influencer space, having captured the attention of Gen Zers worldwide, and now looking to build lucrative businesses around their massive audiences. "I think TikTok is super interesting," Jad Dayeh, a partner and the cohead of digital at WME, told Business Insider in a wide-ranging interview. Since the rise of digital media, WME has developed a department for influencers who are popular on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and now TikTok. Dayeh said WME spent a lot of time last year negotiating these "multimillion-dollar multiyear deals" for the gamers the company represents. WME also focused on securing partnerships between digital talent and major brands.

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