Azoff, LN Get The Times Treatment

The New York Times published a lengthy piece April 25 on the merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, including some snarky observations on execs Irving Azoff and Michael Rapino.

We learned, for instance, that Azoff is not tall, and that he is fond of a particular digital expression.

But amid a lot of information well known to most of those in the biz, a nugget or two of possibly new information was unearthed.
Regardless of whether the U.S. justice department blessed the union, LN and TM had already decided to at least shack up, according to NYT reporter David Segal.

“According to Jim Hurwitz, a former [Federal Trade Commission] lawyer who wrote a paper for the American Antitrust Institute arguing against the merger, Live Nation told the government that it was going to exit the ticketing market no matter what happened with this deal and that it would enter an informal alliance with Ticketmaster if it wasn’t allowed to merge,” Segal wrote.

That’s a quote that will no doubt raise eyebrows in the office of CTS Eventim’s attorneys. As to motive, the Times doesn’t mention one single reason, but more like 800 million of them.

“For Live Nation there were plenty of reasons to join TM. Live Nation was saddled with so much debt – about $800 million, much of it for maintaining venues and for upfront fees for artists – that Mr. Rapino worried about becoming a takeover target,” the NYT report said.