Hey, remember last year, when it was this huge deal that Live Nation was pulling its business from Ticketmaster to sell all of its tickets itself? And then Ticketmaster compensated for the loss of business by buying Front Line Management, who represents a bunch of big-name acts? Turns out it Live Nation was just playing hard to get.
The L.A. Times is reporting that the concert-promotion powerhouse is in the "advanced stage" of merger talks with the reviled ticket company. The new company would be creatively called Live Nation Ticketmaster (maybe Live Nation Ticketmaster Music-Destruction Group was taken) and have a worth of more than $700 million.
Unsurprisingly, a company that sells tickets, manages a ton of A-list artists, and promotes concerts would face fierce anti-trust scrutiny from the government, at least in theory. And the whole deal could still fall apart as they try to hammer out the final details before officially announcing it.