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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?

#81

Post by gardenhedge »

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…

So someone did beat TM by buying them

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

#82

Post by CPLX »

jbotdev wrote: post #68
leehuffman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm except AEG promoted that whole tour (and the too few beyond it – RIP Prince) and is a replica of, and/or, the only direct competitor of Live Nation. That's a weird example to pick out, as if Prince was 'fighting the system', and yet I'm sure you know he exclusively signed & got paid up-front from the 2nd positioned monopoly in the game. Cool story that you got to sit side stage and wrote code behind his fan club…

It’s weird to complain about supporting AEG claiming they’re somehow the 2nd “monopoly” after LiveNation. You can only have one “monopoly” in a given industry, otherwise they’re both just close competitors. Having a close second competitor is still a step in the right direction, even if you disagree with their business practices.

That’s not true. You can have two or more companies share a market via market splitting and the result is still effectively a monopoly.

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

#83

Post by willis936 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #45
willcipriano wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds anticompetitive to me, antitrust action should be taken.

Anti-trust (at least to me) has a connotation with trust-busting and splitting up companies, but I'd be interested in the ramifications of restricting Ticketmaster to creating contracts no longer than, say, 6 months. On one hand, free markets involve sellers and buyers coming together freely which exclusivity contracts prohibit, but on the other hand exclusivity contracts are nominally voluntary agreements which is a…

Trust busting exists for this very case. Shorter contracts would solve nothing because the market is as far from free as it can be and the one in charge has no interest in changing that.

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

#84

Post by atoav »

morsch wrote: post #79
progbits wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't wait for EU commission to notice this and add them to the "gatekeepers" list.

Ticketmaster isn't huge in Europe. I think CTS Eventim is the closest equivalent, with a similar share of tickets sold in a few countries, including their home turf, Germany. But I don't think it's comparable, as they're not similarly vertically integrated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTS_Eventim

I think the lock-in is nowhere near what ticketmaster is doing. Bands don't have to make deals with Eventim, for venues Eventim is typically just an additional way to sell tickets.

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

#85

Post by carlosjobim »

progbits wrote: post #65
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…

Can't wait for EU commission to notice this and add them to the "gatekeepers" list.

[flagged]

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

#86

Post by maleldil »

alistairjallan wrote: post #80

Dice will be making a bigger splash in the US soon. https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/23/dice-books-65m-for-its-eve...

Dice is so much better from a user standpoint. Ticketmaster still mails me physical tickets or asks me to print them. Dice's app just works.

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

#87

Post by rusk »

leehuffman wrote: post #59
Terretta wrote: post #51

We replaced Ticketmaster for fan club tix to Prince's Musicology tour. Ticketmaster wasn't set up to handle the unique setup Prince wanted, popular tour in both arena and intimate venues with scheduled sales. When all Prince's music club fans were trying to buy the tickets to a 300 seat venue at 12 noon on a Friday, Ticketmaster had trouble. Prince being Prince ditched the studio for his music, and bypassed Ticketmas…

Erm except AEG promoted that whole tour (and the too few beyond it – RIP Prince) and is a replica of, and/or, the only direct competitor of Live Nation. That's a weird example to pick out, as if Prince was 'fighting the system', and yet I'm sure you know he exclusively signed & got paid up-front from the 2nd positioned monopoly in the game. Cool story that you got to sit side stage and wrote code behind his fan club…

> I know you know all you've done is present an alternative story that's supposed to garner upvotes

Please don’t don’t do this. Ugly and Boring.

See bottom https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#88

Post by thaumasiotes »

Apreche wrote: post #34
cushpush wrote: post #25

why is ticket scalping still a thing with robust ID

Tickets for events necessarily have a limited supply. If demand exceeds supply, price goes up. The box offices keep the face value prices of the tickets lower than what the market will bear. Therefore, someone will always step in to arbitrate and collect the margin. Even if Ticketmaster were destroyed, it would not have any impact on scalping. The only way to stop this from happening is for the face value of high dem…

That doesn't really respond to cushpush, who is proposing that resold tickets shouldn't be honored by the venue.

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

#90

Post by thatswrong0 »

nextworddev wrote: post #49
Fernicia wrote: post #48

Ticketmaster is a company which is so hated, people ascribe their success to malice and illegal activity rather than any compelling economic arguments. It's unfortunate because their business model is, imo, quite interesting. The first thing to point out is that the question itself is flawed. Ticketmaster has a number of competitors (StubHub, Eventbrite, AXS, Seatgeek). Nevertheless, artists do seem to always gravita…

Thanks for the balanced perspective!

Except this isn’t a balanced perspective. That Ticketmaster can help cover the increased costs of touring is not really relevant to the discussion of “why isn’t there a replacement for Ticketmaster?”.

Why?

Livenation and Ticketmaster controls like 70+% of the market for shows (https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/did-ticketmasters-mar...). They own fuck tons of venues and literally can’t be competed with in a lot of instances. Theres not a competitor because it turns out that acquiring vast numbers of venues is expensive and is only something that a market leader like Livenation could do.

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