Live Nation & Blockbuster Forge Ticketing Deal

When Live Nation launches its ticketing service in January, its tickets will be sold within 500 outlets of Blockbuster. In fact, the DVD rental conglomerate will sell blocks of tickets hours before they’re available anywhere else, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Blockbuster “gives us great consistency of brand, great footprint location, and turns retail ticketing into an asset,” Live Nation ticketing CEO Nathan Hubbard told the WSJ. Retail ticketing was viewed previously as low priority, he added.

This is good for Blockbuster, too. The public may like that there’s no more late fees, but when a company does away with its largest source of income, it’s never good for the stock, which reacted negatively. Blockbuster has tried to match Netflix with mail-order services, but it’s a Johnny-come-lately. To that effect, Blockbuster has been diversifying its business, from adding game and DVD player sales to new distribution efforts like burning movies onto Archos digital media players in store.

The Blockbuster ticketing service is expected to account for 10 percent of the more than 10 million tickets sales Live Nation expects to have in the U.S. next year.