Friday, November 20, 2009
OFT investigates ATG Live Nation purchase
The Stage: "Ambassador Theatre Group’s £90 million purchase of Live Nation’s UK theatres is being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading, in a move that will prevent the two businesses being fully integrated until early 2010."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I am certainly not a promoter of Live Nation as an entity. Live Nation has monopoly on venues and ticket sales in the US as it stands -- I would hate to see that spread over seas. To an extent, I like the notion ATG taking some power from Live Nation. However, if they become the Live Nation of Britain, then we're are still in the same predicament. With the monopolization of theaters comes constraints on art and push towards commercialism and way from artistic integrity -- this has been proven. Let us hope that ATG is responsible with their acquisition.
Once again, I'm very glad to hear of regulators at least starting to do their job. The article doesn't make it sound like there is actually a serious risk that the merger will be stopped, which is problematic, but hopefully, there will at least be some limitations or conditions put on the merger to allow for a little bit of competition. I don't know a whole lot about the UK government, but I assume they have the same issues with corporate money effecting the climate of such issues.
And now everything is wrapped in red tape. Such is life in the world we live in. It seems that Live Nation will not have a monopoly in the West End. But outside of that, they have a majority, but how close are all of those theaters? We'll have to wait and see.
Post a Comment