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Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

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Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#21

Post by caseysoftware »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #11

Ticketmaster has exclusive deals with artists and venues. Artists not signing deals with Ticketmaster lose access to venues, and venues not signing exclusivity deals with Ticketmaster lose access to artists. There are enough of these on both sides that neither wants to lose the other so they sign. Side note: I worked at a small ticketing software shop circa the Ticketmaster/LiveNation merger. The CEO got a call from…

^ This.

~15 years ago, I was working with venues to see how we could handle ticketing, etc. They ALL had exclusive deals where the venue could ONLY sell online through TicketMaster and then TM would handle ~100% of the back office reporting, tracking, etc and even the onsite credit card processing for walk up sales.

It was one end to end system/suite and to replace any of it, you had to replace ALL of it once the contract was up. Not a fun space at all.

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#23

Post by cbsmith »

danabenson wrote: post #17
teppic wrote: post #3

Live Nation, who own Ticketmaster, also own the venues and do the promotion for the tours. They have a vertically integrated monopoly.

Succinct. Precise. Accurate. Correct.

Not accurate. TM already had a lock the market before LN acquired them. In fact, LN created their own ticketing platform to compete with TM... and failed miserably.

Take a look at the largest venues in the country. Most of them aren't owned by LN, but they still use TM for ticketing. If anything, TM has helped LN to acquire more venues than the other way around. In general, TM has a much more dominant share of the ticketing business than LN has of the venue or promotion business.

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#24

Post by wslh »

bendangelo wrote: post #22

I worked at a startup that tried to compete with them. Eventually we just sold to them. I don’t know the details sorry.

This is why it is naive to think that a startup is successful because of the product. Here product market fit is about power specifically.

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#26

Post by cushpush »

zie wrote: post #5
powera wrote: post #4

Artists like using Ticketmaster because they can blame Ticketmaster for fees. And, more broadly, blame Ticketmaster for the unavoidable problems that arise because there isn't an unlimited supply of tickets, and artists want to generate (almost) as much revenue as possible from them.

Most artists generate nearly all of their income from tours.

Not to be pendantic, but could you please provide some general numbers or cite any source for this

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#28

Post by latchkey »

cbsmith wrote: post #23
danabenson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Succinct. Precise. Accurate. Correct.

Not accurate. TM already had a lock the market before LN acquired them. In fact, LN created their own ticketing platform to compete with TM... and failed miserably. Take a look at the largest venues in the country. Most of them aren't owned by LN, but they still use TM for ticketing. If anything, TM has helped LN to acquire more venues than the other way around. In general, TM has a much more dominant share of the ti…

You're bringing up the past, they are talking about the present, which is absolutely accurate.

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#29

Post by Terr_ »

JohnFen wrote: post #20
bastard_op wrote: post #18

The question should really be why the FTC tolerates this, letting them after all this time enjoy the blatantly monopolistic anti-consumer stance they've enjoyed since the 80's (at least). It isn't difficult to see how nasty of a business this is by how hated they are by artists and consumers alike, and if nothing else they should be broken up the same way Ma Bell as a telecom monopoly. At least it might come with som…

Truly. Of all of the various big companies that are being accused of monopoly, I can't think of a clearer, more supportable case (one where the monopoly position is obviously being abused) than Ticketmaster. And yet, the feds don't seem to mind.

I imagine one factor is whether a monopolistic company has made enemies along the federal partisanship divide, or been in a situation where a politician believed they could advance their own career by stirring something up.

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#30

Post by cbsmith »

Honestly, it's not what the rhetoric tells you.

The entertainment business is not very technical. TM serves as their IT department. By the nature of the business, everyone wants to differentiate themselves from everyone else. So literally every client wants some special feature that no one has seen before. TM is the only place that can afford to say, "sure, we'll do it" to all of them, and since most of the clients (sports teams being the major exception) aren't that technically sophisticated, so they're not in a position to do the differentiation on their own.

Startups usually don't succeed by having more features than entrenched competitors. They succeed, but delivering a small bundle of features that create a huge value difference. If one were to do that, it'd be great for the first few clients that used them, and then it'd be "old hat" and everyone else would want tons of new, differentiated features, which would cause the startup to lose focus. The industry doesn't want a handful of outstanding features. They all want to be snowflakes.

> I constantly see people complaining about ticketmaster with scalping

Ironically, the reseller market is the one part of the ticketing market that TM hasn't dominated. It's kind of ironic that people talk about TM when they complain about scalping.

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