Today's Outrage: Ticketmaster's Convenient Tie-Up

If the Boss was upset about Ticketmaster's (TKTM Quote) pricing practices before, wait until he gets a load of this.

The ticketing giant said Tuesday it will merge with concert promoter Live Nation (LYV Quote) in a deal that could fly in the face of antitrust rules. All that remains to be seen now is how high they set convenience charges.

You have to give Ticketmaster and Live Nation credit, though, as they got right to defending the deal, arguing that it will help improve access, transparency, ticket pricing options, event attendance and ticketing technology.

"Ticketmaster does not set prices. Live Nation does not set ticket prices. Artists set the prices," Ticketmaster Chairman Barry Diller said, according to a report by The Associated Press.

However, Diller failed to mention the so-called "convenience" fee his company charges to buyers, which can sometimes double the cost of a ticket. On top of that, Ticketmaster also operates its own reselling subsidiary, TicketsNow, in order to combat ticket scalping on other Internet sites like eBay (EBAY Quote).

TicketsNow recently came under fire from the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen. When some fans attempted to purchase tickets to a Springsteen concert through Ticketmaster, they were automatically redirected to TicketsNow, which offered seats well above face value, even though tickets were still available through Ticketmaster's main Web site.

"The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you," Springsteen's Web site read last week. "Some artists or managers may not perceive there to be a conflict between having the distributor of their tickets in effect 'scalping' those same tickets through a secondary company like TicketsNow -- we do."