More on Live Nation now, and Billboard is reporting that it is looking increasingly unlikely the live music conglom will renew its ticketing relationship with Ticketmaster.
As previously reported, there has been speculation that Live Nation may take ticketing in house for about a year now, after the promoter's CEO Michael Rapino started to indicate that he wanted more control over the sale of tickets to his firm's venues and events. The latest Billboard report is based on an internal Ticketmaster memo that they claim to have seen which says: "While it has been our sincere desire to create a new long term partnership [with Live Nation], we now believe it is doubtful we will extend our agreement when it expires at the end of 2008".
Ticketmaster's relationship with Live Nation began in one of the company's earlier incarnations - as SFX. The deal stayed in place after Clear Channel acquired the firm in 2000, and again when Clear Channel's live entertainment operations were spun off to create live Nation. The Live Nation contract is thought to account for about 10% of Ticketmaster's overall revenues so is obviously important to them, but the aforementioned memo reportedly says: "we believe we've taken every reasonable step possible to facilitate a [contract] renewal, but they seem intent on a direction for their business that leaves us no viable way to work together".