Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 169 posts

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

#91

Post by danielrhodes »

In addition to what everybody else has said, I will add one more thing:

They don't go down when there's a big ticket sale. If you've ever used these alternative ticket sites, they will struggle under the load.

The reason it is hard is because there is a flood of people all hammering your site at once, all doing credit card transactions. There's bots. There's people hitting refresh constantly.

They are lame for a lot of reasons, but they don't suck in this department. And I imagine that is important for a lot of people.

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

#92

Post by maccard »

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

Ticketmaster are enormous in Europe. Pretty much every major artist uses them, and every festival uses them (aside from Glastonbury apparently). If that's not your definition of huge I don't know what is.

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

#93

Post by hfhdjdks »

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…

Sounds like a two-sided market, where a company gets their value from being able to connect one side (the artists) with the other one (the venues).

What I find strange is that people aren't usually reluctant to sign exclusivity agreements because it's very limiting. How did ticketmaster get so big to begin with to force / convince people of signing exclusivity clauses?

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

#94

Post by themaninthedark »

CPLX wrote: post #82
jbotdev wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be a duopoly not a monopoly.

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

#95

Post by hfhdjdks »

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…

The busting and splitting up is a hard tool, but anti-trust has many other tools at their disposal, including maintaining status quo (i.e. refusing the merge of two companies). Disclaimer: I don't work in the US, so I'm not sure if anti-trust there is heavily biased there to this heavy duty tool, but I do know they have plenty of other tools

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

#96

Post by rmbyrro »

hfhdjdks wrote: post #93
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…

Sounds like a two-sided market, where a company gets their value from being able to connect one side (the artists) with the other one (the venues). What I find strange is that people aren't usually reluctant to sign exclusivity agreements because it's very limiting. How did ticketmaster get so big to begin with to force / convince people of signing exclusivity clauses?

Probably burned a lot of cash to build its dominant position and are now milking it back.

One way would be to sign deals reserving venue space in advance for a good chunk of the year. Artists wanting to perform there on dates reserved to Ticketmaster would need to sign exclusivity deals.

This has a network effect. The more they do, the more effective is the strategy and the easier it gets to keep doing it.

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

#97

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

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.

Yup. I'm convinced that part of Ticketmaster's business proposition is to absorb the hate for artists who want to maximize profits but don't want to look responsible for the ruthless capitalist approach because it would taint their artistic appeal.

Ticketmaster's service is to provide something to point a finger at. People hating them instead of their clients is just their product working as intended.

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

#98

Post by jasode »

hfhdjdks wrote: post #93
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…

Sounds like a two-sided market, where a company gets their value from being able to connect one side (the artists) with the other one (the venues). What I find strange is that people aren't usually reluctant to sign exclusivity agreements because it's very limiting. How did ticketmaster get so big to begin with to force / convince people of signing exclusivity clauses?

>How did ticketmaster get so big to begin with to force / convince people of signing exclusivity clauses?

By dangling more money.

In the 1980s, Ticketmaster beat the competitors (e.g. Ticketron) by offering the venues a better financial deal.

Ticketron charged the venues a service fee. Venues pay Ticketron.

Ticketmaster flipped that around and made a clever proposal: instead of charging the venue, we'll charge the concertgoing fans extra service fee(s) and we'll give the venue a percentage of the fees collected. To sweeten the deal, we'll even pay the venue _upfront_ money as part of signing an exclusive deal.

https://thehustle.co/the-sneaky-economics-of-ticketmaster/

That's why most ideas about creating a new ticketing startup to "disrupt Ticketmaster" are naive about how the underlying business deals actually work. E.g. if the well-meaning programmers have idealistic motivations to create a new "fair ticketing" system that doesn't charge outrageous fees, the venues will not sign up with you which means you have no tickets to sell at the "cheaper & fair price".

Why would the venues use your new "fair ticketing" system if it means they get less money?!? That's the financial puzzle a viable Ticketmaster competitor has to solve.

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

#99

Post by gorbachev »

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…

You forgot Ticketbastard's scalping business. They are (were?) directly involved with scalpers operating a "platform" for them:

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/649666928/ticketmaster-has-it...

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

okdood64 wrote: post #33
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…

Perhaps if there were enough big artists to get together and "strike" against Live Nation/Ticketmaster exclusive venues something might change for the better for their fans. But, alas, that money too good.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN