Ticketmaster, Live Nation Finally OK to Merge

Ticketmaster shares and Live Nation shares have both risen after they won a U.S. antitrust clearance that is allowing them to merge together.

For the two companies to merge, the U.S. Justice Department had a few requirements. First, Ticketmaster had to license its primary ticketing software to a competitor, they also had to sell off one of their ticketing units, and they had to agree to terms that bar it from retaliating against other venue owners who decide to use a different ticket service.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation will merge into a new company called Live Nation Entertainment and they will own more than 140 concert venues globally, and sell over 140 million tickets a year and promote over 22,000 concerts on a yearly basis.

Christine Varney, the head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, told Reuters that she expected ticket prices to decline as a result of the merge. The Live Nation and Ticketmaster merge will last for ten years.