All Posts Tagged With: "major league baseball"
AEG may be ending its relationship with Ticketmaster
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Mon, Nov 02 2009 | 0 Comments
Ticketmaster is one of the problems with going to concerts these days. Everyone talks about how expensive tickets to concerts have become thanks to all the fees imposed by Ticketmaster Entertainment.
It looks as though Ticketmaster may become a bit less powerful now, however. AEG is thinking about replacing Ticketmaster with Tickets.com (it is owned by Major League Baseball and Veritix Inc). Of course, AEG says that it might change its mind if Ticketmaster and Live Nation merge into one company.
If Life Nation and Ticketmaster to merge, then almost all the concerts in the United States will be ticketed through Ticketmaster and everyone can pay ridiculous fees if they want to go see their favorite acts live.
AEG accounts for just under 10% of all of Ticketmaster’s sales.
It looks as though AEG has some time to think about it though. The report to Bloomberg said that the contract between the two companies doesn’t even expire until July 2012.
I have not purchased a ticket from Ticketmaster since I was 14 and saw Nsync in concert. Since then, all of the concerts I have seen have been in bars and small venues that did not have a ticketing system like this, or they were free. I remember, even then, that the tickets were quite expensive and the fees that were tacked on to each ticket were simply outrageous. I believe that a $20 surcharge for “Ticketmaster fees” is too much when the ticket only costs $30.
Earlier this summer Live Nation actually reduced the fees it charged for tickets because people weren’t attending concerts like they used to. It was partially because tickets were too expensive and also because people didn’t have the money that they once did.
I wish that venues would sell their own tickets rather than going through a third party system like Ticketmaster. Enough people have the internet now that no one has to wait in lines outside their local grocery store waiting for tickets to go on sale (which is what we had to do when the Nsync tickets went on sale…it was in 1999 when I bought the tickets so give me a break!).
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Tags: ticketing system, major league baseball, ridiculous fees
Texas Rangers Lay Off Staff Members
Michael Bowler | RSS | Wed, Jun 17 2009 | 0 Comments
The Dallas/Fort Worth-based Texas Rangers Major League Baseball organization has laid off several staff members from its front office team. This comes about two weeks after Tom Hicks, the Rangers’ owner, said he was looking to sell the team. Rangers spokesman John Blake said yesterday that only 10 percent of the staff was laid off. He also said that the potential sale of the team was one of several factors that created the layoffs. Before staff was cut, the Rangers had about 275 employees, including personnel whose jobs are on the field.
The layoffs came despite a spike of ticket sales and attendance. Fan attendance has increased to 867,016, about 11 percent over the same time last year, as of yesterday’s game against the Houston Astros, the opening game of a three-game interleague series.
Last month, Hicks said that he would be willing to sell controlling interest in the Rangers organization, due in part because to financial problems he is facing. Earlier this year, Hicks Sports Group, the corporate name for Hicks’ sports endeavors, defaulted on $525 million in loans backed by the Rangers and the NHL’s Dallas Stars. Hicks also owns the Stars.
Hicks bought the Rangers for $250 million in 1998. The previous controlling interest was owned by former U.S. President George W. Bush. Since then, he reorganized the team several times, once spurring the signing of shortstop (since turned third baseman) Alex Rodriguez, and then another time spurring a trade to the New York Yankees, an American League competitor.
In February of 2008, Hicks brought in 62-year-old Nolan Ryan as president of the team. Ryan is a Hall of Fame pitcher who rose to fame as the ace of the several pitching rotations including the New York Mets, California Angels, Houston Astros, and Texas Rangers, even though he is best known with the Rangers.
Last month, Forbes valued the Rangers organization at $405 million, which places them at 15th out of the 30 Major League Baseball teams. Two years ago, Hicks combined with Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett Jr. to buy the English soccer club Liverpool through a different entity than Hicks Sports Group.
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Tags: spokesman john, major league baseball, pitching rotations
