Concert-Promotion Behemoth Putting On Quite The Wall Street Show

BusinessWeek takes a look at the Wall Street success of LiveNation, the concert-promotion company that was spun off by Clear Channel in 2005; the company is set to post a profit of around $190 million from 2006 revenues. But all isn’t healthy in LiveNation’s world; despite its acquisition of House Of Blues, which further established its dominance in the concert market, the company’s success was, in large part, based off of ever-inflating ticket prices from the likes of the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand. As the BW writer’s hundreds of snarky asides note, that doesn’t bode well for LiveNation’s future profits, because those people are, like, old (although not afraid to wear a glittery blazer now and then). Another statistic from the story, though, showed an even worse long-term outlook for the concert business: the number of concerts taking place in the United States has nearly tripled over the past six years, jumping from 5,000 to about 14,000, while overall ticket sales have dipped by around 3% since 2001. So what you’ve got, despite the good overall numbers, is an ever-smaller audience of people who are willing to shell out for tickets, parking, and flat beer; the Business Week story indicates Live Nation is aware of the real numbers lurking behind its stock-market success, and is looking to focus its operations on about 20 of the country’s cities, shedding underperforming venues and, presumably, allowing them to have actual Web sites again. Whether this means that those 20 cities will have to introduce an even more expensive version of VIP packages (“for $10,000, you also get a post-show foot massage!”) in order to keep the profit margins up remains to be seen.

Music To The Street’s Ears [BusinessWeek via BrooklynVegan]