Power duet-Why Barack Obama will join Bruce Springsteen to stop Ticketmaster & Live Nation's merger

February 6, 6:18 PMPop Culture ExaminerDominic Patten

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Turns out Hell hath no fury like a crossed Boss, especially if you mess around with his fans.

Fresh off his Super Bowl XLIII half time show and hitting number #1 with his new album Working On A Dream, Bruce Springsteen this week turned his not inconsiderable firepower on Ticketmaster. Playing a distinctly populist tune, the New Jersey native has also highlighted some serious concerns over a possible merger between the giant concert ticket and venue vendor and Live Nation, the giant promoter and artist management company ... and people in the corridors of political power are listening.

Let's step back to the beginning of Bruce Springsteen's big week a but - even though it now turns out that the E Street Band were playing along to prerecorded music - click here for full coverage - and almost spot on set list predictions - of Bruce Springsteen at Super Bowl XLII

The source of Springsteen's wrath is that when his fans went on to Ticketmaster's website to buy tickets for the Boss' upcoming tour, many were redirected to the company's resale site TicketsNow, which slaps a higher up sell price tag on tixs. It was a redirect that saw $65 tickets going for over $5300 - and that's not including over $800 in service charges.  Noting that this was happening, as "other seats remained available at face value," Springsteen called this corporate "scalping" a "pure conflict of interest" and an "abuse of our fans."  As the LA TImes' Patrick Goldstein pointed out "Springsteen helpfully directed fans to the office of the Attorney General of New Jersey, where they could register their complaints." And hundreds have done just that, which is why New Jersey, Connecticut and possibly other states have opened investigations into Ticketmaster and TicketsNow.

Click here for more details and dates of Bruce Springsteen's upcoming 2009 North American and European tour

But Bruce, who knew his words would attract widespread attention, went further. "The one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near-monopoly situation in music ticketing," wrote Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau in a post on the Boss' website.

In response, Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff, who is also the manager of The Eagles, the unpredictable Axl Rose and Guns'N'Roses, Morrissey, Christina Aguilera and several other big acts, wrote an open letter to Springsteen to "sincerely apologize" for the redirection and promised to refund any difference in price any fan incurred. However, neither Ticketmaster nor Live Nation has commented on the merger rumor, except in Ticketmaster's case to say they don't comment on rumors, nor the singer's "monopoly" comment. Wall Street, on the other hand, did comment with the slumping shares of both Ticketmaster and Live Nation rising 13% and 5% respectively with news of the two perhaps becoming one. Proving that acquisition is the sincerest form of flattery, this is after Ticketmaster has started to diversify its role in the music industry and just a month after Live Nation started up its own ticket vendoring arm.

If the states are involved, you can be sure the federal government will be getting in the game as well. Members of Congress have already received complaints about the redirect and have started requesting that the Justice Department's antitrust division look into any merger. Also don't be surprised to see one politician who is rather fond of Bruce Springsteen leading the charge to fly the anti-monopoly flag. Like past Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barack Obama knows that busting or preventing a trust generally plays well with the public - especially a public feeling almost nothing but pain from what is quickly becoming an economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression when FDR was in the White House. Having called Wall Street bonus' "shameful" and just this week putting a $500,000 cap on executive salaries of those at companies receiving federal bailout money, Barack Obama knows the scalp of Ticketmaster and Live Nation could be a winning move for him. In an era where big business isn't viewed in the most flattering of lights and in a week where the President needs to take back hold of the agenda to get his more than $885 billion economic stimulus package in place, following the lead of Bruce Springsteen, one of the few in America almost as famous as the Commender-in-Chief Celebrity himself, can't do Barack Obama anything but good.

 We already know, from his almost unprecedented Presidential preference for the Pittsburgh Steelers to beat the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLII, that Barack Obama isn't weary of getting behind his friends. Steelers owner Dan Rooney was an early Obama supporter and as the President has said "Rooney didn't just endorse me; that guy was out going to steel plants campaigning for me." So when it came time to pick a team in the Super Bowl, the President waved his flag for the Steeler Nation.

 Click here for complete coverage of the election of Barack Obama and the 2008 Presidential campaign

As much as Dan Rooney did for Obama, Bruce Springsteen relentlessly hit the road and the stage in the swing states for the Democrat throughout the 2008 campaign. Out on the stump, with the exception of the candidate himself, no one could draw crowds as large as Springsteen. And nobody could help Obama cross the blue collar divide the way the working class Springsteen did. To say Bruce Springsteen helped seal the deal for Barack Obama is only an exaggeration if you can't count. By the time of the Inaugural, it came as no surprise that Bruce Springsteen was the first performer at the We Are One concert at the Lincoln Memorial. 

Click here for more on Bruce Springsteen's performance at the We Are One concert, his new album, his Golden Globe win and Oscar snub, his new tour and how, including an appearance at the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, 2009 will be the Year of the Boss.

I don't think Bruce Springsteen has asked President Obama to back him on stopping a possible Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger, but I do know that the Boss chose his words on his website very specifically. And you don't have to sell too many millions of albums or rally the faithful at too many  political gatherings to know that the words you use and who your audience is matters. So you have to wonder, if the Boss is against the Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger, how far behind will his pal the President of the United States be? Get your front row seat now and don't get redirected, this could be a really good show. I mean like better than WrestleMania  X and Brice Springsteen's Super Bowl set put together, and just as real.