LOS ANGELES, CA (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Live Nation has announced that the company has reached an agreement to enter into a 12-year pact with U2, who will join the company's Live Nation Artists roster. The deal is a big one too and while LN has been reticent to reveal the numbers, some analysts such as David Joyce at Miller Tabak told Reuters that the agreement would "likely be in the $100 million range."
Through this new association U2 and Live Nation Artists will collaborate on a variety of the band's global music enterprises including touring, merchandising, and the band's website, U2.com.
Working with Live Nation is not a new iteration for the Irish rockers as Arthur Fogel, Chairman of Live Nation's Global Music Division and Chief Executive Officer of Global Touring, has produced every one of the band's highly-successful tours since PopMart in 1997.
"We've been dating for over 20 years now, it's about time we tied the knot," said U2's Bono. "We want a closer, more direct relationship between the band and its audience and Live Nation has pledged to help us with that."
The deal also falls a little short of a so-called "360" deal, as U2 currently has no plans to break its longstanding relationship with Universal Music for recording and also publishing.
"It's not a do-or-die situation that we have to be involved in the recordings," Live Nation Chairman Michael Cohl said in an interview with Reuters. "We'd prefer to, but it's not always available."
Paul McGuinness, U2's Manager is bullish on the deal as well, stating "U2 are doing their best work right now, on record and in concert. The opportunity to integrate U2 and Live Nation's vision of the future is a great extension of our established business and of our working relationship with Arthur Fogel and Michael Cohl, which started back in 1980 at the El Mocambo in Toronto." – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
