File under worst news ever:

Starting January 1, 2009, all tickets for concerts and events produced by Live Nation and presented at Live Nation Venues will be available for online purchase exclusively through LiveNation.com.

Though at first blush, this statement seems to indicate that all online tickets for Live Nation shows will only be available through the awful LiveNation.com. Upon closer inspection, I guess this wording leaves out shows that are “not presented by Live Nation” at Live Nation venues, aka rental shows with third party producers. While I suppose Live Nation feels that they are going to make a good deal of cash off of this arrangement by not having to pay Ticketmaster fees, and then of course, charing their own “convenience fees” on top that, I really wonder how many shows that otherwise would have sold out won’t because people won’t simply know where to buy the tickets. Having said that, I’m guessing they’ve run the numbers on this and if it didn’t work in their favor, I doubt they would have gone ahead with it. I guess the only question I have left is, when are they going to upgrade the semi-professional looking LiveNation.com into something that looks and feels like a website. Not that I’m a huge fan of Ticketmaster.com or anything, but it’s still about a thousand times better than Live Nation’s site.

PS You can also file this under a giant FU to Ticketmaster.