April 20th, 2009
There’s been a lot of coverage lately of the proposed merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. And generally speaking, it doesn’t look good. If the two companies are able to merge, the combination would create the world’s largest and most powerful entertainment conglomerate. Of course, neither of these two companies were very popular prior to the merger talks. And recent events haven’t done much to alter that opinion. The biggest complaint is that the Live Nation/Ticketmaster conglomerate would operate as a monopoly, having almost complete control over the concert industry.
A few weeks ago, I received a survey offer from e-Rewards about concert tickets. The survey never disclosed who was behind it. But given the fact that Live Nation/Ticketmaster is probably scrambling to improve its public profile, it seems likely that the survey was sponsored by these companies. Here are some screen grabs from the survey (click the images to see larger versions through my Flickr account):
One of the items is “I want to see all the booking fees broken out separately.” I found that interesting because there’s been a lot of pressure on Ticketmaster to be more open about just what the company’s ticket fees are actually for.
This one makes some references to the controversial topic of ticket reselling.
More references to fees and reselling here.
As I stated above, I’m just guessing that this survey was sponsored by Live Nation/Ticketmaster. The name C.A. Walker Research Associates appeared on all of the survey pages. Perhaps someone more industrious than me can link this company to Live Nation/Ticketmaster. There’s obviously nothing serious about a company conducting a survey like this. But if it is indeed a Live Nation/Ticketmaster survey, it shows that the companies are trying to gauge public opinion, probably so they could create some positive spin on what is seemingly a very unpopular merger.
(More screen grabs available here.)
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:25 am
I love filling out surveys! But, since there are rarely concerts here, I don’t buy tickets much, thus I don’t much care if Live Nation and Ticketmaster merge. I’ve never even heard of Live Nation that I can remember.