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

141–150 of 169 posts

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

#141

Post by ttymck »

gigatexal wrote: post #77
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…

So where’s Lina Kahn pressuring to break up these exclusive agreements? She made hay talking about them in 2022 but what has been done recently? https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/big-firms-lik...

Has the FTC actually managed to effect any regulatory power in the past 10 years? Why should we hope they would succeed here.

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

#142

Post by leehuffman »

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.

Fine. I used the wrong term. You can't argue anything else I wrote outside of the word "monopoly" though, sooooo...

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

#143

Post by leehuffman »

rusk wrote: post #87
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…

> 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

Fair enough. Message received.

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

#144

Post by nsteel »

bazmattaz wrote: post #108
morsch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is gigantic in the UK

That's a bit confusing when gigantic.com is "one of the UK's largest independent ticket agencies".

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

#145

Post by zie »

cushpush wrote: post #136
zie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/07/17/artists-touring-... Literally a web search will give you plenty. The NYT even did an article about it.

Okay, am hung up on the distinction between "most" and "top" artists.

As far as I know the economics don't really change, just the $$ amounts.

Streaming services pay peanuts and nobody outright buys albums anymore.

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

#146

Post by nsteel »

danielrhodes wrote: post #91

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…

I've sat in that TM queue during a big sale a bunch of times, sometimes you get in, sometimes you just sit there until you realise it's not actually doing anything. I don't think sticking a broken queuing system on the front is any better than going down. It's maybe actually more frustrating because you think it's all working.

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

#147

Post by Fernicia »

leehuffman wrote: post #60
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…

> Ticketmaster has a number of competitors (StubHub, Eventbrite, AXS, Seatgeek). Those are reseller platforms (StubHub, Seatgeek) and independent entities (Eventbrite & AXS) that aren't associated with the venues/rooms they're playing in. So your examples either: 1) Resell tickets from Ticketmaster + the list you mentioned + all other providers, or 2) They don't have the ability to flex on people because they don't o…

I can tell you are very emotionally charged about this subject matter so thank you for taking the time to respond.

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

#148

Post by thaumasiotes »

ggybdese wrote: post #109
thaumasiotes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you suggesting there is no valid use case for reselling tickets other than scalping? (I am unable to make it to an event today for which I bought tickets due to an unforeseen circumstance). Do you propose that my ticket has to go to waste?

I'm suggesting that cushpush specifically indicated that venues should prevent any and all resale of tickets, and the comment I responded to purported to respond to cushpush in a way that was a total and complete non sequitur.

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

#149

Post by zie »

danielrhodes wrote: post #91

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…

Taylor Swift might disagree with you: https://www.vulture.com/2022/11/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-sa...

Of course she might be an extreme end of the market :)

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

#150

Post by jjeaff »

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…

I don't think they are hated by the artists. I think they provide the artists a very useful and desirable service. Which is to extract every possible penny from fans while also taking the negative PR hit on behalf of the artist. The artist can throw their hands up as if there really is nothing they can do and blame it on Ticketmaster. Yet they are getting a healthy cut of all those fees and above retail ticket prices. Either through up front exclusivity agreements or through other hidden means.

Ticketmaster then tries to offload some of the blame to unknown "scalpers" but I think it's very likely that most of the scalpers are either Ticketmaster itself or entities contracted with them.

it's the only logical explanation since if they really wanted to solve the scalping problem, it would be the easiest thing in the world to solve. just make the tickets non-transferable.

Post reply on HN