With a potential playoff position looming for my Columbus Blue Jackets, I have been looking into the possibility of purchasing tickets online. I don't live in Columbus, and I can't take the time to go and camp out in front of the arena for tickets the night before - so I am willing to suck it up and actually pay the service fees that *gulp* Ticketmaster (NASDAQ: TKTM) charges. Of course, I guess I could suck it up like so many Leonard Cohen fans did and try to get the tickets through a ticket broker (and pay a ton of money), right?

Ticketmaster (NASDAQ: TKTM) finds itself on the end of new allegations that it is fleecing customers, thanks to a Leonard Cohen show -- yes, Leonard Cohen. Back in February, the company announced a merger with Live Nation in a $2.5 billion deal to create the nation's largest ticket provider. This deal prompted quite a bit of speculation on monopolies, along with some disdain for the involved companies.

It seemed that Ticketmaster had fallen out of the public eye for a while, although people still complain about the 40% surcharge to purchase tickets. Enter Leonard Cohen. Two different articles surfaced this week, one from Canada and one from Los Angeles, complaining about the company's business practices stemming from ticket sales for Leonard Cohen shows.

Everyone's favorite Pearl Jam foe, Ticketmaster, is targeting the competition by merely absorbing it. The subsidiary of IAC/InterActive (NASDAQ: IACI) is scooping up TicketsNow Inc. for about $265 million. TicketsNow, which sold $202 million worth of tickets in 2006, is currently the country's second-largest reseller of tickets for concerts and sporting events. Number one in the resale business (a market with an overall estimated annual value of $2.5 billion to $5 billion in the U.S.) is StubHub - a division of eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY).

Many of the sellers on StubHub, TicketsNow, and other sites procure their tickets originally from Ticketmaster, but Ticketmaster currently misses out on any profit gleaned from a resale. The Wall Street Journal notes that "Where resellers once were viewed as shady scalpers, now, thanks largely to the Internet, they are becoming more respectable."

TicketsNow, according to the article, is primarily a tool for professional ticket brokers, who acquire tickets from Ticketmaster and other sources and then sell to customers. The site currently charges buyers 15% on top of the sale price, and charges variable sellers' fees depending on sales volume and additional factors. Hopefully, with the two ticket names in cahoots, it doesn't essentially mean that Ticketmaster will be earning twice from the sale of a single ticket. But as the Journal points out, "The acquisition raises potentially thorny questions for TIcketmaster..."

It's been a busy year for Ticketmaster in the news ... this deal comes after concert promoter LiveNation vowed to sever ties with Ticketmaster but ahead of a planned spin-off of Ticketmaster into its own publicly traded entity.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Selling tickets online is nothing new. I remember visiting one of the early companies back in 1997 called Tickets.com.

Well, it seems that the space is heating up again, especially in light of eBay's $310 million purchase of StubHub.

Venture capitalists (VCs) are paying attention and are revving up deals. The latest: a $34 million investment in TicketsNow. The lead investor is Adams Street Partners.

The company focuses on selling premium event seating. According to the website: "We go to great lengths to make sure that the products we sell are authentic and the services we offer are beyond reproach. TicketsNow.com enforces the industry's most stringent rules for listing tickets on our site, yet we still are able to offer you the largest selection." Then again, the company works only with licensed brokers.

Moreover, TicketsNow crossed over $200 million in revenues last year and is continuing to grow at a hefty rate.

With the IPO market becoming more receptive to tech deals, it's a good bet the company is thinking of a public offering.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.