LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Live Nation's Michael Rapino buoyed the market with a talk on Thursday where he revealed that despite the gloomy fears of investors, the promoter sees no weaknesses in the ticket market for 2009.
According to Reuters, Live Nation reported that sales of 2.91 million tickets for 1,213 shows for the year ended on December 15. These figures are weighted against sales of 2.95 million tickets sold for 1,206 shows for the same period from the previous year.
"You can't have those numbers sitting here today and say no one's going to show up next year; we'd have felt something by now," Rapino told investors on Thursday.
Live Nation's ticketing venture went online at the beginning of the year and Reuters reports that Live Nation has already sold more than 177,000 tickets to shows at 52 of its venues. The process of untangling Live Nation from their former ticket vendor, Ticketmaster, continues however and the company still sells 47% of Live Nation's tickets, Rapino said.
Rapino's comments emboldened investors and Live Nation's stock closed up by 18% in late trading Thursday. – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
