The man behind SFX Entertainment is power broker Robert Sillerman, an entertainment-biz wizard who amassed a fortune's worth of radio stations, sold them off last year, and then began systematically buying a half-dozen of the country's best-run, most powerful independent concert-promotion companies. When those acquisitions were completed this month, SFX was suddenly in control of a national web of 42 major concert venues and more than 100 clubs and small theaters.

Now SFX indisputably dominates the concert market. It has the clout to book a major national tour for a star as big as Alanis Morissette -- who will hit the road this summer -- with a single phone call. That's could bring a staggering end to business as usual -- to a 30-year history of booking agents' haggling with a series of regional promoters throughout the US to arrange such tours, and to those agents' and promoters' getting their piece of the pie. And as a publicly held company with a need to recover its huge recent investments and drive up its stock price, SFX Entertainment is expected to be aggressive.

No wonder booking chieftain Tom Ross, director of the music division at Creative Artists Agency, one of the world's biggest representatives of artistic talent, recently delivered an alarmed and fiery denunciation of SFX. No wonder some promoters who share borders with SFX in the turf-obsessed concert business are fortifying their interests, while others are rumored to be angling for an SFX buyout.

SFX will prove a tougher adversary. One of its acquisitions, the St. Louis-based Contemporary Group, operates its own highly successful regional ticketing operation. In keeping with its aggressive, stock price-driven strategies, SFX investor relations director Tim Klahs says, the conglomerate is looking to use Contemporary's expertise to challenge TicketMaster.

What SFX Entertainment's clout and its potential economies of scale mean for us concertgoers is unclear. But one troubling element of SFX's ascent is its link to the Marquee Group. SFX-man Sillerman is also chairman of Marquee, a New York- based agency that, among other activities, brokers corporate sponsorship deals for arenas. Such big-dollar sponsorships, which Klahs says SFX is ardently interested in expanding, typically deliver blocks of the best seats into the arms of the companies that shell out dough for logo placement. That leaves average ticket-buyers farther back in the stands.

A grand entrance

With his coffers filled, Sillerman went on a carefully orchestrated buying spree. By the time the year was up, he'd spent $449 million on seven companies. The largest purchase was Houston's PACE Entertainment, at $130 million. Sillerman paid $65 million for the San Francisco-based promoter Bill Graham Presents. He also acquired New York's Delsener/Slater; Fisher, Indiana's Sunshine Promotions; Atlanta's Concert/Southern Promotions; and St. Louis's Contemporary Group. And he bought the research/publishing/promotions company SJS Entertainment/Network Magazine Group, of Los Angeles.

Sillerman's goal is to build SFX Entertainment into what biz-school types call a "vertically integrated" company. Observers including Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of the live-concert industry bible Pollstar, note that Sillerman has been building up in-house expertise in virtually all aspects of the concert business. Which means that SFX has within its vast grasp the ability to promote and produce shows, book tours, manage and book artists, cut deals on its purchases of concession goods and other supplies, and sell tickets.

Just last month rumors began circulating that SFX was poised to acquire heavy-hitting booking agency Monterey Peninsula Artists. Monterey's roster includes such powerful draws as Aerosmith, Phish, Indigo Girls, Blues Traveler, Live, Fiona Apple, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Monterey's principals deny an impending sale. However, Pollstar has reported that SFX's Delsener/Slater operation and Monterey Peninsula have entered into a long-term agreement with the H.O.R.D.E. Festival founders to produce and book the annual tour.

There's also Contemporary's ticketing operation, plus the SJS/Network group's services covering research and programming for the record and radio industries. Not to mention Marquee and QBQ's management, booking, and sponsorship know-how. Between its acquisitions and its relationships, SFX's possible command of the marketplace is indeed staggering.

How big is big?

Top-dollar concert years usually reflect heavy stadium touring. In '95 and '96, there were no major stadium tours. In 1997, the Rolling Stones and U2 packed the sports forums. Rising ticket prices at indoor arenas and amphitheaters also contributed to the escalating grosses.

Tim Klahs says SFX has no more major acquisitions scheduled at present. Yet Sillerman has told the radio-industry news magazine The Gavin Report that "I would be stunned if 1998 ended and we were the same company as we are today."

Wall Street moves in

Indeed, corporatization is pervasive today in the major fields of pop-culture entertainment: the highly formatted world of radio from which SFX emerged; TV, with its Big Four networks; the movie business, dominated by seven major studios and a few national theater chains; even Hollywood and Broadway, where production conglomerates put together megadeals.

In his quest for the corporate holy grail of high profits and strong investor returns, Sillerman is a visionary who saw ripe, unplucked fruit in the live-concert industry. "It was a very segmented business that had not taken advantage of its full potential in terms of getting its message out to a highly targeted audience due to capital constraints," explains SFX's Klahs.

A music-biz insider with considerable experience buying and selling businesses offers this simple translation: "I'm sure they see the concert industry as a sort of Neanderthal business that hasn't realized the opportunities inherent in consolidation. They have a much larger view of things. They believe they can roll up all the various parts of the business -- managers, agents, bookers, venues -- and make a lot of money."

Booking agents are sweating

The music-biz truism is that relationships are everything. But even casual industry watchers who've read books like Hit Men and The Mansion on the Hill know that in this often cutthroat business, all a good relationship will guarantee you is a cup of coffee -- provided there's a buck-fifty in your pocket. And dealing direct with a megapromoter like SFX would yield a hell of a lot more than chump change for artists and their managers.

Hence the blazing speech made by Creative Artists Agency music division chief Tom Ross at the Concert Industry Consortium on January 30. "Corporations, suits, Wall Street -- they're going to replace the lot of you," he thundered in what's been the only real public vilification of SFX by anyone of import in the music industry. Indeed, agents who were asked to comment on the record for this story either refused or did not return calls, presumably fearing possible reprisals from the fearsome new giant.

Ross railed against corporate sponsorships at arenas, complaining that "giving a backstage pass to Wall Street" squeezes average-Joe fans out of sports events like the Super Bowl and the best seating on major concert tours. He said he's worried that the quest for bigger concert-industry profits has impeded touring opportunities crucial to the development of new artists, pointing out that fresh talent has always been the business's lifeblood. He gibed that "SFX may stand for Send Funds Federal Express," and chided promoters -- people he's worked with for much of his 30 years in the business -- for selling out.

He also summoned the specter of his own profession's obsolescence. "No one's really sure what's going to happen," says Pollstar's Bongiovanni. "Agents are most concerned because any time a company has the ability to bypass their place within the industry infrastructure, well, there's reason for concern."

But SFX's Klahs responds that the company has no plans to bypass booking agencies. "We will serve different functions at different times," he states. "Sometimes we are the promoters, sometimes we are the ones who book . . . There's no intention to bypass the industry structure that's already in place. We regard what we've created here as an easing of the somewhat trying and often difficult process of having to book an act into a number of locations. We regard our ability to provide one-stop shopping as a plus to the industry as a whole."

Of course, if SFX were to acquire major-talent booking agencies the size of, say, Monterey Peninsula to bolster the already strong roster they have with Marquee and QBQ, the effect could be the same. Those SFX-affiliated companies would have the power to influence talent pricing throughout the industry. Instead of being bypassed, booking agents would be emasculated.

The artists' perspective

However, Billig also sees big negatives. "It'll be harder to break bands. If everything's bottom-line focused, everything will be influenced only by the thought of selling tickets, not developing artists. With that much power, you're a slave to their set of rules. They decide where they'll set a ticket price and merchandising policies and parking prices -- all the things they make extra revenue off of."

"Going over the booking agents' heads. . . . Well, that would shake things up tremendously," says E.J. Devonale of Hard Head Management. "The [SFX-owned] venues and promoters that have established relationships with booking agents could be put in the position of having to go around some of their friends. That's rough. With one company having so much control over so many venues, some bands won't really be able to play. It'll be a yea or nay, and the bands that are lucky will get the exposure, and the company could tack on any service charges [for tickets] they want to."

That's an especially important concern for Hard Head, which handles the developing acts Gov't Mule and Vitapup. Gov't Mule, in particular, are at a point in their career where live-concert exposure is crucial. They've just released their first album on Capricorn, a label with distribution through Polygram, and are being considered for opening slots on several important summer tours.

"The alternative is to try to do it on your own, and we saw what happened when Pearl Jam did that," Devonale says. Indeed, Pearl Jam's '95 tour has to many become emblematic of what happens when a strong-willed music-biz giant gets crossed. The Seattle group's attempt to avoid places affiliated with TicketMaster, to liberate their fans from the tyranny of high service fees, proved so disastrous that it threatened to destroy the band. Pearl Jam's exhausting tour through off-the-path sites resulted in cancellations, unfilled houses, bad production, and the eventual collapse of singer Eddie Vedder from the heat of the battle.

Agents aren't the only ones who refuse to buy SFX's promises to play by established rules. The strong regional independent promoters that remain, including Don Law's Blackstone Entertainment, are pulling their wagons in a circle and awaiting SFX's next move. These companies include Universal Concerts, Nederlander, and Avalon Attractions, all in Los Angeles; Larry Magid, in Philadelphia; Arnie Granat's Jam, in Chicago; Bill Silva Presents, in San Diego; and Tom Moffatt, in Honolulu.

Nonetheless, SFX chief Sillerman insists that national touring artists will not be shackled in pacts that require them to play only SFX spaces. "I don't think there will ever be a tour that just plays SFX venues exclusively," he recently told radio watchdog The Gavin Report.

"Certainly, important markets like Boston mandate that artists make appearances in venues we do not control," says SFX's Klahs. "It's going to be business as usual."

Turning tickets into gold

He continues: "You've got to remember that TicketMaster has had the benefit of relatively sparse competition over the past few years. We look at ourselves as a service organization, and this is an opportunity for expansion."

The stakes here are also sky-high. Let's say there's an average service charge of $2 -- a very conservative estimate -- on every one of those 60 million tickets TicketMaster sells. That's $120 million generated in service charges alone. And TicketMaster's very public battle with Pearl Jam has left the company with a tarnished image that even its pending purchase by USA Networks, for $400 million, isn't likely to shine up.

For concertgoers, this rumble in the music-industry jungle will remain largely behind the scenes. It will probably take a year of operations at the new SFX before any economies of scale or other savings -- including the possible elimination of agents' fees -- could trickle down to the consumer, if that's going to happen at all. And it may take at least that long to see whether SFX makes artist development part of its game plan -- allowing unproven acts to test their mettle in SFX locations -- or shuts them out in favor of guaranteed moneymakers.

Here in New England, we could have one of the best ringside seats in the concert-promotion territory battles. If SFX aggressively goes after Don Law's turf, the signs of their competition are likely to be a proliferation of concerts, more local advertising for SFX events at places like the Meadows and the Hartford Civic Center, additional SFX purchases of New England concert venues, and possibly bargain ticket prices as Don Law and SFX compete for your dollars.

What's certain is that more lines will be drawn in the shifting sands of the concert industry as SFX continues to test its brawn. There will be casualties. Don't look for Don Law's well-fortified Blackstone Entertainment to be among them. But it seems inevitable that bodies will fall somewhere as this new corporate monster claims its own. And maybe more.