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Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
81–90 of 126 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
The artists can do better too, if they have the power to make TM share the upside (most don't) because TM controls much of the resale market and is also moving towards surge pricing. This is why they're pushing into virtual ticketing so hard (Ticket-less Master?) TM also has huge vertical integration. If you want to perform a live show at almost any mid/large venue your tour is likely to be managed by Live Nation, an…
Sounds very anti trusty. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/act... https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
Unfortunately, monopoly laws are enforced like the rules in monopoly: entirely arbitrarily
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#83I am so pissed at my 2004 self.
I was in 2nd year university and won a bid to create the website and ecommerce platform for a local event. The website was for:
Event information, Team Schedules, Buying merhcandise, and event tickets.
My partner and I created, to our knowldge, the first ticketting system with live purchasing for seats at a stadium where you could choose your seats. Ticket master was not doing this at the time.
We drew the stadium with squares. It showed reserved, and purchased seats while selecting. It even picked the best possible seating so it wouldn't leave one spot vacant if you choose the "get me the best availble seats for N people option".
It was a huge success for a stadium that seated 8k people.
After the event was over, the main attraction host team asked us if we could do the ticketing system for their games. Their games were at the ACC. After a couple weeks they came back and told us it wasn't possible because Ticket Master had the rights to the stadium.
So what did we do? University was stating up soon so we went back to school. My business mind didn't even think to turning it into a service back then because we assumed ticket master controlled everything.
Forever facepalm.
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#84> Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
Because speculation is at the core of capitalism.
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#85TicketMaster has exclusive contracts with the vast majority of venues and just about every large one. These contracts include kickbacks where TicketMaster will add $X of fees to each ticket it sells and pass back Y$ (Y It's essentially the venues and artists outsourcing the job of "being the asshole" to TicketMaster as a large chunk of the money eventually flow back. They get to publicly blame TicketMaster, claim the…
It isn't just that the venues have exclusive contracts, its also that if they break the exclusivity contract with TicketMaster, they can't use a competing service for 2 years (though I can't find proof of this, when I worked in venues 20 years ago, this was the case).
SongKick took a stab at breaking TicketMaster, as did PearlJam, and a few others. Everyone has failed so far.
This is clearly monopolistic and harmful to concert goers, and StubHub (also a Ticketmaster/LiveNation company) was fined a few years ago for selling tickets at a premium which were never made available to the public.
The whole industry is so shady, it's pathetic that this is allowed to continue.
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#86related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kShIppJtHiY Every Phish tour starts the same way. Enter the lottery and hope to win tickets in some random spot. Don't win lottery and join the Ticketmaster queue. Watch the site fall apart for an hour. Crashes at checkout and you're back to the end of the queue. Go on Stubhub and pay 2x or more for the "big" shows (Halloween, NYE, etc). But hey, also crashed chess.com.
Such a travesty, everyone should be given an equal opportunity to see Phish. There's an idea that floated around that the band should either start their own venue or festival grounds. I am not sure how logistically viable that is, but it would totally solve the issue of ticket distribution if they could just do it organically.
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#87TicketMaster has exclusive contracts with the vast majority of venues and just about every large one. These contracts include kickbacks where TicketMaster will add $X of fees to each ticket it sells and pass back Y$ (Y It's essentially the venues and artists outsourcing the job of "being the asshole" to TicketMaster as a large chunk of the money eventually flow back. They get to publicly blame TicketMaster, claim the…
> If you are attending any event and you can actually buy the tickets directly at the box office then go that route. You'll likely save anywhere from 25-60% off the price of the tickets.
I've bought Broadway tickets at the box office to save on processing fees, and they just printed out TicketMaster tickets.
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#88The answer is that Ticketmaster gives 50% of their revenue to the venue, which is a pretty good deal for the venue, so they have every incentive to keep that relationship going
They run a not that complicated website. As someone who loves live music, they take way too much in ticket fees for the value and difficulty of the service they provide. Legitimately, it feels like expertsexchange. Economically, it doesn't seem to make sense for artists and venues to be giving so much money to a partner who is delivering so little value. Even if the venue is getting half of the ticket master fee, the…
> They run a not that complicated website.
That's not entirely true, the surge demand on their site is enormous. They pay for enormous capacity that is used only sporadically.
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#89TicketMaster has exclusive contracts with the vast majority of venues and just about every large one. These contracts include kickbacks where TicketMaster will add $X of fees to each ticket it sells and pass back Y$ (Y It's essentially the venues and artists outsourcing the job of "being the asshole" to TicketMaster as a large chunk of the money eventually flow back. They get to publicly blame TicketMaster, claim the…
So much this. And just to add, any startup that even attempts this, EVEN WITH 100% ARTIST SUPPORT, cannot work out because venues have the exclusivity contracts.
And worse, you can't split a venue up to 2 different sellers. They don't have a communication protocol for which seats are sold, so you end up in a position of double-booking. Also bad.
Basically the only way for this to work is:
a) a system exists where venues publish an event and seating
b) the system does nothing but keep track of sales and seats. They don't care who sold, just tracking that it was sold. Also allow full API access so any service can reserve and claim the seat, the service is now on the hook for that seat.
c) allow venues to indicate which services can sell their tickets
This will commodotize ticketmaster, but at the same time, there will very little value add, so who would compete. It'll be a race to the bottom with barely any money. And the service you build could take a small fee at best otherwise nobody would use you. AND you'd be competing against ticketmaster with almost no money.
And don't forget, the double booking problem... Your service will have to basically integrate with ticketmaster, who will never willingly do this given that you'll commodotize them, and they will not simply sacrifice themselves just to make some sort of positive outcome, and then also be completely beholden to another company.
Its a perfect monopoly field.
Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?
#90No post body was provided.