Pitchfork

It's been nearly fifteen years since members of Pearl Jam testified before of Congress about Ticketmaster's virtual monopoly over the concert-ticket business. But right now, that monopoly looks to become a whole lot less virtual.

As Billboard reports, today Ticketmaster and live-music promotion leviathan Live Nation announced their intentions to merge in a massive $2.5 billion deal. If they squeeze this one by antitrust officials, the massive company will call itself Live Nation Entertainment. It will oversee not only the country's largest ticket sales companies but also some of America's largest concert venues, the biggest tours, and 360 touring/recording/everything else deals with titans like Jay-Z and Madonna.

The combined companies expect to save $40 million annually in the deal, but, as a post on Wired magazine's Epicenter blog points out, that $40 million could possibly come at the expense of the people who actually buy the tickets that these companies sell. Of particular concern: Ticketmaster's secondary ticket-seller service TicketsNow, which auctions off tickets rather than selling them at specific fixed prices.

Last week, Ticketmaster incurred the wrath of both Bruce Springsteen and New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell when Ticketmaster automatically directed Springsteen ticket buyers to TicketsNow, which offered the tickets for sale at way-increased prices. Ticketmaster, then, was basically scalping tickets to its own shows. On Monday, Toronto resident Henry Krajewski went so far as to sue Ticketmaster for selling its own tickets at inflated prices. As Billboard reports, he got the TicketsNow automatic redirect when he tried to buy Smashing Pumpkins tickets last year.

In a statement, Springsteen himself decried the practice: "Some artists or managers may not perceive there to be a conflict between having the distributor of their tickets in effect 'scalping' those same tickets through a secondary company like TicketsNow-- we do." Springsteen managed to elicit an apology from Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff, who offered refunds to people who had bought the overpriced TicketsNow tickets.

But as Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk points out, who's going to stop Ticketmaster from engaging in the same practices when they essentially own everything?

Here's Van Buskirk:

"While the combined company might take the opportunity to ditch the 'convenience' fees that are detested by fans -- or at least internalize the fees (which are divided between Ticketmaster, the promoter, and sometimes the performing artist and other parties) -- the idea of bypassing the primary ticketing market entirely and introducing them directly into the TicketsNow auction system could give prospective audience members with more cash to burn a big edge over impecunious fans -- even if those other fans are quicker on the draw when it comes to buying tickets.

"In other words, thickness of wallet -- and not quickness of response -- would become the salient factor when trying to buy tickets for hot shows."

So if Ticketmaster and Live Nation decide to start selling tickets through an auction system, rather than on a first-come first-serve basis, the days of obsessively refreshing websites when big shows go on sale will end. People who can outbid the rest of the world on those big tickets will be able to buy straight from the source, and the rest of us will be left out in the cold. Awesome.

Springsteen, for one, isn't happy about this possibility. In that statement, he went on to decry the pending merger: "The one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing."

To be fair, Ticketmaster and Live Nation haven't announced any plans to switch over to an auction system just yet. But don't be surprised if it happens.

Billboard reports that previous antitrust investigations of Ticketmaster could force antitrust regulators to give this deal extra scrutiny, which could in turn prevent the deal from becoming official for a year or longer. We can only hope.