Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger is a raw deal

[Commentary] At first blush, it looked like a slam-dunk antitrust case for the government. Ticketmaster, a company that came to dominate the live-music ticketing business by buying up seven of its rivals, was suddenly facing a challenge to its 83 percent market share. Its largest customer, Live Nation, a big venue manager and concert promoter, had decided to launch its own ticketing subsidiary and quickly grabbed 16 percent of the market. Ticketmaster responded in kind by purchasing Front Line Management, which manages tours for 200 of the country's top music artists. Earlier this week, the Justice Department reached a settlement with the companies.

Ticketmaster will be required to 1) license its ticketing software and 2) sell to Comcast a subsidiary that provides software to smaller venues that want to run their own ticket operations.

Even given those considerations, however, the better option would have been to block the deal. The gradual retreat from antitrust enforcement over the past 30 years has led corporate executives and their lawyers to believe that there is no merger that cannot win approval if you're willing to make some relatively minor fixes. The Ticketmaster settlement also sets a terrible precedent on so-called "vertical" combinations -- mergers between a company and its suppliers or its customers. Perhaps even more troublesome, however, is that in order to provide sufficient competition to a bigger and more vertically integrated Ticketmaster, the government has put itself in the position of playing midwife to two other vertical mergers making it even more difficult for small venues and independent promoters to survive.