PreferredSeat.com Blog

It appears Irving Azoff is willing to blow off the $275 million that Ticketmaster spent to acquire Ticketsnow, the secondary ticketing company, as one of the concessions to regulators to get the Ticketmaster – Live Nation merger approved. The speculation is that the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation could be approved if some of the other entities they own are sold off.

The first on the list would have to be Ticketsnow, but since Azoff has been blasting the company in the press for months, he’s blackballed the very company he needs to sell. Then, to seal the deal he told a group of lawyers in Los Angeles this Saturday that reselling tickets should be illegal and he would press Congress to implement more anti scalping laws. Who’s going to buy a company that the present owners have vowed to destroy it’s only means of success?

There has to be a lot more money involved in monopolizing the entire music business as Irving Azoff looks to do, than the $275 million they paid for Ticketsnow. And to say it is for the benefit of the consumer is a slap in the face to people with reason. One company controlling the tickets, from print to concert, is like Ford controlling the resell of your car after you paid for it. Or the dentist telling you that he gets a cut of the gold in your mouth, should you ever decide to sell it.

The funny thing in this is Irving Azoff’s reasoning for outlawing scalping, “I tell them that they wouldn’t allow someone on the street to scalp a gallon of gasoline when there’s an oil crisis” says Azoff. “Why would they allow someone to stand on a street corner and scalp a ticket when it’s in high demand, too?”. Well Irving, the oil companies have been scalping oil forever! Especially when there’s a crisis. Where have you been! And Ticketmaster and Azoff’s game plan to change to dynamic pricing just is built upon the idea of supply and demand. If demand is up, Ticketmaster will raise the price.

And reselling tickets has nothing to do with street corners any more, not that it makes any difference at all. Nobody should have the right to control a product once a consumer has purchased it, not for cars, gold teeth or tickets.