Losses Grow At Live Nation: Merger Costs, Lower Ticket Sales & Tickets Now Damage Bottom Line
(Updated) Losses grew at Live Nation last quarter as the company absorbed the cost of its January 25th merger with Ticketmaster, a drastic drop in income from Tickets Now and faltering concert attendance.
The company claims that the merger will eventually save $40 million in redundant costs. But that won't help much if ticket sales continue to fall. Last year they dropped 3% to 6.8 million from 7.1 million in the previous year while total spending per concert goer grew 2% to $59.71 from $58.57.
Ticket reseller Tickets Now had been delivering $15M in revenue a year to parent Ticketmaster, but when the federal merger approval required that links from their main ticketing site be dropped, revenues fell to $1 million. "The minute we had to unlink from our website, that business over the last year has deteriorated," said CEO Michael Rapino on the earnings call. "So we're looking at strategic options for that division."
Leave a Reply