Live Nation duking it out

Lots of buying and selling at Live Nation, the L.A.-based booking company that wants to focus on the music business. This week, a Louisville private investment group said it acquired three divisions of Live Nation's SFX Sports Group. The deal covers agent representation for tennis players, including 2003 U.S. Open champion Andy Roddick; a media operation that holds TV rights outside the U.S. for the U.S. Open and French Open tennis championships; and a division that produces sports events, including the Boston Marathon. Live Nation was spun off by Clear Channel Entertainment, and the company went public late last year. It recently made a $350 million bid to acquire House of Blues concerts.

There's other stuff going on. Turns out that two of Live Nation's biggest bookers were hired away by competitor Anschutz Entertainment Group. The Rocky Mountain News quotes promoters in Denver as saying that the two defectors, Brent Fedrizzi and Don Strasburg, had been doing a good job. For the pair to break off from Live Nation "must mean a lot is going on that nobody's talking about," said Doug Kauffman, co-owner of Nobody in Particular Presents, an independent promoter. "I'm just glad that NIPP is an independent promoter and not at the mercy of any of the politics that go on with these huge corporate concert promoters."

Live Nation has had a curious start on Wall Street. It began trading at $11 a share and jumped to nearly $25 in early June before pulling back to below $20. Why the strong opening? As explained by Paul LaMonica of CNNMoney. com, the stock was considered very cheap, and the company announced plans to buy back as much as $150 million worth of shares by the end of the year. It also operates and/or owns the rights to 150 U.S. concert venues (last year it produced nearly 30,000 events). But earnings have been all over the map, and there's also the concert business itself.

Total revenue from the top 100 tours in North America did increase last year. According to figures from concert tracking firm Pollstar, revenue in North America was $3.1 billion in 2005, up from $2.8 billion in 2004. But the main reason behind the increase was the fact that tickets for the most popular shows continued to get more expensive. The average ticket price for the top 100 tours last year was $57, up from $52.39 a year ago. Actual attendance declined by 4 percent, with the top tours selling 36.1 million tickets in 2005, compared to 37.6 million a year earlier. That's the second year in a row that attendance was down.

David Bank, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, says that Live Nation has to pay hefty fees to performers (one reason the company isn't very profitable).