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The combination of metro Detroit's two largest entertainment companies has created a business that controls a large swath of venue seating across Southeast Michigan, and gives it a market dominance seen in few cities.
What new Detroit-based 313 Presents LLC also has is negotiating leverage with artists and promoters, but it's too soon to say definitively how consumers will be affected at the box office. What it means for the joint venture partners is almost certainly a fatter bottom line.
The Oct. 8 announcement that Palace Sports & Entertainment and Olympia Entertainment had created the 50-50 joint venture 313 Presents means that the new entity functionally controls 44 percent, or almost 100,000, of the 226,000 seats across 29 of the metro area's major and culturally significant entertainment venues.
That makes the new company a force to be reckoned with.
The joint venture was born from the relocation of the Detroit Pistons from the PS&E-owned Palace of Auburn Hills this year to downtown's Olympia-run Little Caesars Arena (home of the Detroit Red Wings, also run by Olympia) after 29 years in northern Oakland County. Part of the deal was a plan to combine the entertainment businesses, ending decades of competition for concerts and other shows.
313 Presents links three Olympia venues -- Little Caesars Arena, Comerica Park and the Fox Theatre -- with three owned or operated by PS&E -- DTE Energy Music Theatre, Meadow Brook Amphitheatre, and Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill.
Olympia runs two other venues, City Theatre and Soundboard at MotorCity Hotel Casino, that are not officially part of 313 Presents but functionally operate as part of its portfolio. Their seating is included in Crain's capacity calculations.
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