NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — eBay subsidiary StubHub, one of the largest ticket resellers and one of Ticketmaster's primary rivals in the business, met with federal regulators on the proposed Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger.
The meeting took place after the announcement of the merger, but StubHub chief exec Chris Tsakalakis declined to comment on the nature of the discussion, Bloomberg reported.
Tsakalakis has revealed however, that he is concerned that the merger may create a monopoly in the secondary ticketing market.
"Our concern is the new Live Nation would create a closed loop where only they could do secondary ticketing," Tsakalakis told Bloomberg. "You can start to set controls on how ticketing is done and how secondary ticketing might be done."
Tsakalakis also called for anti-scalping legislation introduced by Senator Charles Schumer to be broadened to include provisions to reguire public accounting of primary ticket sales, Bloomberg said.
StubHub is one of the leading players in the secondary ticket market which analysts estimate may exceed $4.5 billion by 2012. Ticketmaster has their own ticket reseller operation, Ticketsnow, a company that has been at the center of a number of controversy lately centering on concerns that Ticketmaster has been selling tickets directly through Ticketsnow instead of through their primary sales website.
