Some are saying this is unexpected. But I suspect it’s more fallout from that 2008 legal feud between John Malone and Barry Diller. That’s because Malone’s Liberty Media today announced plans to begin a partial tender offer to buy up to 34.5 million shares of Diller’s Live Nation Entertainment common stock at a cash price of $12 a share. Liberty through its subsidiaries already owns 14.6% of Live Nation because of a previous stake in Ticketmaster, and yesterday Live Nation and Ticketmaster officially closed their merger. Barry Diller will serve as chairman of the board of Live Nation Entertainment. But remember that a Delaware court ruled against Malone in his effort to block Diller from splitting InterActiveCorp into multiple companies. During that trial, Malone whined a lot about Diller’s arrogantly self-serving management style. Now I bet Malone wants a do-over to play shareholder activist and scrutinize Diller’s every move.
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Very unexpected. The events space is getting very crowded with several upstarts currently targeting smaller venues (e.g., eventful), as is the ticket selling space. If Malone wants to tick off Diller, invest in one of the upstart evite copycats.
“Why do you need to wreck this company?”
“Because it’s WRECKABLE, all right? I took another look at it and I changed my mind!”