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Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
171–180 of 250 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#172When you bride and lobby with people of your interests in a broken political system, what you expect to happen? Monopoly. Worst part, people keep buy tickets from Ticketmaster, pay crazy amounts of money to see Taylor Swift, and it never ends!
If people had a voice, if people stopped buying tickets from Ticketmaster, now we would have a different outcome.
In Toronto for example, many events I went to used eventbrite. There was also ticketweb, part of Ticketmaster, which I tried to avoid as much as possible.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#173They're fuckin hounds that's how. Know someone who was the CTO for a competitor in sports tickets which was later acquired by them. They had hundreds of people on payroll who would stand in line at box offices to buy up anything they could, along with an internal tool that would let them enter seat details to get a price range to determine if the scalpers selling theirs were worth the asking price. Was maybe 7 years…
Yeah tbf as someone who works in the industry, that sounds more like a ticket brokerage than what Ticketmaster / StubHub etc do (directly). I’ve learned from personal experience that ticket brokers will do some WILD stuff.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#174I think a few providers, particularly with high fixed assets like venues, will always dominate in pricing power over many buyers (same for oil companies). The difference between oil and events is that they're elective (not a real need) and almost never substitutes (you don't go to one performer instead of another due to price). So providers really have the incentive to avoid competition (just as movies used to avoid…
People would revolt if there were auctions, because it would make it impossible for many people to attend live events. Right now there is the hope that you can, even if that’s most not true. For example, I did the Amex presale for US Open tickets. There were 22k people in front of me for regular day passes during the earliest rounds. So we end up with an auction-ish situation anyway, via the resale market, but can bl…
For some artists in Japan we do lotteries. There's an application period and then the opportunity to purchase is doled out randomly among the applicants. You can often apply for multiple tickets together if you're a group, but ID is checked at the venue for the purchaser so you have to arrive together, making resale more awkward. Usually there are multiple rounds to sell the tickets when nobody paid - some times an early round for fanclub members.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#175I use Dice for some venues
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#176Many of the other commenters have explained how the ownership structure of Ticketmaster gives them near monopoly control because they also own the radio stations and the venues and the promoters. (I'm using "they" and "own" very liberally in this paragraph.) The simple fact that there's an ownership link between Ticketmaster and the scalper I mean totally legit resale sites is so wildly corrupt that, well, it's textb…
> while leaving the musicians looking like neutral parties.
Then why wasn't Pearl Jam able to shake them in the mid 90s?
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#177Many of the other commenters have explained how the ownership structure of Ticketmaster gives them near monopoly control because they also own the radio stations and the venues and the promoters. (I'm using "they" and "own" very liberally in this paragraph.) The simple fact that there's an ownership link between Ticketmaster and the scalper I mean totally legit resale sites is so wildly corrupt that, well, it's textb…
" leaving the musicians looking like neutral parties."
Isn't this giving Ticketmaster too much credit, for helping artist profit.
When part of the problem is the artist also does not get as much from the high ticket price. Since Ticketmaster owns the venues, and the entire supply chain, the artist is also enthralled and must take whatever 'lower payout' that Ticketmaster feels like giving.
So, tickets might be high, the artist also gets a fraction.
The ticket buyer only has one option, the artist only has one option. Both sides of the equation are losing while the grifter in the middle is taking a mad fat cut.
This is such a well documented clear cut case of monopoly, it makes me really sad that nobody is breaking it up. Just generally, that the system is failing.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#178Matt Stoller has written some excellent articles about Ticketmaster's monopoly crap.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#179If you're Microsoft and you release another Xbox, would you ask Nintendo or Sony to provide the OS for you, or would you use just modify Windows to run on your latest Xbox?
The venue is owned by a company that also owns a ticketing system. Of course they're going to use it.
Ticketmaster gives promoters very liberal API access and has a complex resale and dynamic pricing system that the promoters and artists can utilize. This is where the sketchy things can happen.
The dynamic pricing system (which is optional and enabled by the artist/promoter) is obviously going to perform like an auction system, so the price is going to shoot up for popular artists.
The shadiest part by far is that promoters can enable the secondary market if the artist allows it, then purchase and resell the tickets themselves. This will obviously make them look like scalpers, but there is a difference, the artist usually has a profit share agreement, let's say 80% of the profits after expenses go to the artist and 20% to the promoter. This profit share agreement usually doesn't cover the profit generated by the resale of tickets, so the promoter has a strong incentive to make his money using by "scalping".
If you look at the consumer facing entity "Ticketmaster", you're looking in the wrong place.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
#180A question only tangentially related to the original post, but I always wonder about it when I read such discussions. To all the people, who complain about "price gouging" or "scalpers" and "lack of regulations": if there are no fair market price, how exactly are you planning to judge who is "worthy" of getting a ticket and who isn't. Let's say, you somehow forced them to sell tickets at low prices and somehow magica…
First come first serve, and multiple show dates if you're optimizing for sales. There are lots of platforms for ticket sales and venue management. That's how they run high school and college events, local theaters, etc. Ticketmaster is doing something completely different.
Guess who wins that, bots. Now you need a whole new system to verify the identity of the buyer (which HN would prob love).
Also is First Come First Serve really fair? Some people have more time at hand to keep refreshing the page until the tickets are available.