By Jim McCarthy Mar 10, 2010 0 comments

Comcast to Buy Paciolan from Ticketmaster

Here’s the news.  The basic deal is that as part of the smoothing of the past for Live Nation to merge with Ticketmaster, they had to divest Paciolan, which Ticketmaster bought a couple years ago.

Here’s my take on this.  Wow, Comcast is getting serious.  I was at the Montgomery Technology Conference yesterday and bumped into a friend of mine with Comcast Interactive Media.  This move, coupled with the NBC acquisition and the rest of their activity over the last couple of years impresses me a lot.   They’ve got good foresight and I like their understanding of how entertainment crosses platforms and includes the live component as a significant part of the business.

Just in the ticketing realm, they are a formidable competitor to Ticketmaster and Tickets.com if they choose to be aggressive. The Paciolan system is well-known and, from everything I’ve heard from venues, well-liked.  Folding it into an organization that includes a cable company, a major TV network, Daily Candy, Fandango, 85 venues around the country, professional sports teams and a bunch of stuff I haven’t mentioned could be very potent.

People tend to think first of Comcast as a local-monopoly cable service, but if you’re in the entertainment business, I urge you to review that perception and make sure you understand what Comcast is up to.

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